


Mixed Signals

by tenshinokorin



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, Origin Story, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin/pseuds/tenshinokorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meet Reno Montague, age 17. Occupation: rentboy. <br/>(Mixed Signals Series originally posted on bishink.org between Feb-May 2006. Fic inspired by multiple songs on Over the Rhine's album Films for Radio, my personal FF7 soundrack.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Substitutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet Reno Montague, age 17. Occupation: rentboy.

_the truth is i bleed you_   
_when these frequencies cut me_   
_i'm a slut with a mission_   
_a singular vision_   
_i radio heaven_   
_i get mixed signals_   
-Over the Rhine, "I Radio Heaven"

  


"There was a call for you," Angelo said, something accusing about the way he leaned down over the banister, looking at his older brother through thick, taped glasses. "I think it was about work."

"My cell died again." Reno shook the cold off with his coat, and brushed his hands over his forearms. "You didn't tell Ma, did you?"

Angelo shook his head. "She isn't back yet." There was a pause, small, worried. "Are you going out again?"

Reno glanced up at him, and something about the faint mako glow in Reno's eyes made Angelo flinch, just a little. "Well I don't know until I take the call, do I?" He punched the playback button on the phone; the lettering on the plastic button had long since worn off.

_Reno, It's Tony_. Reno rolled his eyes. Wasn't it always? _Listen, I really can't make my regular meeting tonight, can you take my client? He's my best customer, and I can't trust any of the others with him. If you can, don't bother calling back. Just meet him tonight at the Midgar Grand, Sector Four, in the lobby. I've already told him to look for you. He answers to Xi_.

Reno scribbled the pertinent info down on the notepad by the phone. Upper client meant extra for train fare, and probably a good tip. Even getting a substitution dock, it was nothing to sneer at all for the sake of a night's sleep.

_I gotta go, they're taking her into delivery now. Thanks man, I owe ya!_

"Yeah, yeah." Reno tore off the paper, and tucked it in his shirt pocket. "I'm goin' back out, Angelo. Tell Ma I won't be back tonight. Your cold getting better?"

"No." Angelo's hands clenched and unclenched on the battered stair rail. "You don't have go, do you?" His voice was painfully small and his scowl showed how much he hated it. "You're making enough already, right?"

Reno reached up to touch Angelo's nose, easy enough in the tiny, cramped apartment. "You need new glasses, kiddo." He winked, and slung his jacket on. The door let in a gasp of cold air as Reno slammed it behind him, leaving Angelo in his pajamas, on the stairs.

"No I don't," Angelo whispered, but nobody was home to hear him.

  


"Upper client tonight, Montague?" The rail conductor asked, waving away Reno's ID without looking at it. "Didn't think you had any."

"Hey, I've got surface clearance." Reno passed over a wad of crumpled gil for his fare-- money he hoped to make back in tip before paying for the ticket home. Otherwise it was gonna be tough getting back down the next morning.

"I know, I just thought all your boys were down here." The conductor tapped his fingers against the ticket device on his belt as though it was a musical instrument, and handed Reno the stub.

"I'm filling in for Tony. His girlfriend went into labor tonight." Reno glanced down the track for the train. The warning lights should have been going off to signal its approach, but they hadn't worked in Reno's memory. "Don't tell Bansu if he turns up looking for me."

"Never saw ya," The conductor drawled, as the train howled into the station, snapping Reno's ponytail back in the wake. Reno swung up into the nearest car before it stopped moving, hanging sideways off to let the last trickle of commuters off.

"That's what I like to hear," he said, and hauled himself into the first seat.

The train ride wasn't long, and going back up to the top of the plate after rush hour, it was almost empty. Reno redid his eyeliner and his ponytail, both without looking, even when the lights went out and the electronic hum of a security check buzzed in his ears.

_Sector Four, upper level. Approaching_. The train jostled and whined, curving around the tight core of the main plate support, and Reno stood up to lean on one of the poles, watching the slowing landings flickering by. In the dark places between them he caught his own reflection: tight jeans, the long cuffs of his white shirt under his jacket sleeves. Nicer than the clothes his family wore, but Reno didn't really have much choice in that. It was a uniform, and without it, he couldn't get his job done.

Reno caught eyes watching his own in the reflection and he turned to meet the open stare of a young punk hanging off the back of one of the battered seats. He grinned insolently when discovered, his intent obvious in his stare and the slightly lewd gesture he made with the neck of his beer bottle.

Reno's fingers tightened on the pole, cold scored metal biting into his palm. "You got a problem, pal?"

"Yeah." He ran the back of his hand over his mouth, displaying badly done arm tattoos and obscuring his broken teeth. "I gotta problem. You wanna fix it for me, baby?"

"Get a magazine," Reno snorted, distain obvious as he turned back around. "It's all you've got the gil for."

_Sector Four. Doors open on the left_.

Reno's would-be paramour started up from the seat, his face reddening at the rebuff. "Why you snotty little bitch--"

He got as far as that, bottle raised, before Reno's boot caught him square in the middle, slamming him backwards into the seats. His elbow cracked under the punk's chin, snapping his head back, and putting down on the floor with a subdued whimper. Reno made a point of stepping on him on the way out onto the platform, instead of just over him.

It helped for one to have certain sets of side skills, in his line of work.

  


The lobby of the Midgar Palace Grand was covered in enough gilt to handle several fields of exceptionally large lilies, and Reno's reflection repeated a thousand times in the long lines of parallel mirrors. In clothes that were more than good enough for under the plate, he couldn't help feeling a little scruffy. He winked at a young woman who stared at him on her way out, wearing enough fur and diamonds to sink an airship, and she did not look quite so scandalized as she might have tried to.

Reno tossed his hair back and strode across the lobby as though it was something he did every day, crossing to the cocktail lounge glittering in the center of the room like an ostentatious floral centerpiece.

"May I help you, sir?" The maitre d's expression was much less pleased than the woman's; it was clear that Reno's gray snakeskin jacket offended his very senses.

"I'm meeting someone," Reno said, and flashed his business card. The maitre d's face went even more sour. _One of these days_ , Reno thought, _I'm gonna ask one of these shitheads just what the hell their problem is with buying a good clean fuck_.

"I don't doubt it," his antagonist said, trying to expand his shoulders to keep Reno from going any further into the bar area. "But I'm afraid, sir, your services are not required, and you can meet your someone just as well at the curb--"

Reno bristled. "Look, buddy," He hissed, tapping his business card in an ominous fashion on the gleaming black marble counter. "My services are not only required, they were fucking requested. I'm not a curbside bitch offering a free case of clap with every shag. I'm a guild member with a conglomerate, I have client to meet and a rep to uphold and a nice shiny permit from City Hall, and I'm already having a rough night, so if you want a bribe, you're out of luck. I don't grease bellhops. Got it?"

The maitre d' swelled, no doubt prepared to tell Reno that he could grease the door on the way out, and he was interrupted by the clink of a tumbler at the bar and an even, almost bored voice.

"He's meeting me, Gilbert."

The maitre d' blanched under his angry red flush, a color combination that did not suit him in the least. "Of course, sir." He glanced sideways at Reno. "My apologies," he said curtly, inclining his head as though there was a crick in his neck and before bustling off on some urgent errand that he had only just that very moment remembered.

"Thanks," Reno said, stepping down to get a better look at his rescuer-- and client. "I guess I don't look... very... uh."

Reno begin to reconsider whether or not Tony owed him one, wondering if it was in fact the other way around.

His client was tall and dark and tailored, shoulder-length black hair swept into a neat ponytail at the back of his head. Everything about him, from his impeccable suit to the sugar-rimmed glass in one hand and the carelessly perfect folds of the overcoat on his elbow, was as flawless as an airbrushed print magazine ad for André's of Midgar. If the overdone decor of the lobby had not managed to make Reno already feel underdressed, then he certainly did now.

Both his ears were pierced, two small demure gold rings on each side, in graduated sizes. Somehow the exotic touch only served to make him look even more professional. The eyes that summed up Reno were almond-shaped and smooth lidded, black and impassive. Between his eyes was a small black dot that seemed to be tattooed there, too perfectly shaped to be natural.

Wutai, Reno thought. You don't see many of them on top of the plate, unless it was an entire extended family running a take-out restaurant, and even then they couldn't have afforded to live on the surface.

"You must be Xi." It was an alias, and both of them knew it. Reno had no doubt that if he knew the man's actual name, he might not only know it, but be sorry he did.

His client nodded. "Mr. Ramirez said he would be sending a substitute."

"Reno," Reno said, and something about the other man's use of Tony's last name prompted him to add his own, hardly standard practice in the profession. "Reno Montague."

Xi stood up from his barstool, sweeping by Reno without sparing him a second glance. "Very well, Mr. Montague, let's go."

Reno, wondering if all upper clients were this frosty, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and followed him.

His client didn't say another word, though he held the elevator door open for him. Xi swiped a keycard through the slot. Floors lit up and passed without stopping, even though the hotel was surely busy enough to warrant more passengers in the elevator.

Reno tried not to shift his weight, not quite believing he was nervous. At this point, any other client of his would already have both hands down his pants.

The regular rooms passed, and the regular suites, until the topmost button gleamed and the elevator doors dinged open on the penthouse, and Reno for the first time really started to wonder who the hell this guy was.

"Would you like a drink, Mr. Montague?" Xi asked, opening the door to the suite and tossing his coat over the back of the sofa. The plush carpet made no sound under his polished shoes as he strode to the bar, gleaming with crystal barware and bottles of alcohol that were more each than Reno's usual nightly haul.

"I'm on the clock..." Reno started, watching the deft motions of his client's smooth brown hands as they flicked out a pair of glasses.

"I don't keep a clock, Reno." Xi deposited exactly three cubes of ice in each tumbler. "I'm charged a regular nightly fee, and that includes the refreshments." He topped the glasses off with amber liquor. "Take off your jacket," he said, and spared only the slightest twitch of an eyebrow in Reno's direction. "As I assume you're staying."

Reno hadn't quite expected the strip order yet, but did as he was told. Not comfortable with putting his jacket on top of his client's, he laid it next to the black overcoat, instead.

"Here." Xi placed one of the glasses in Reno's hand, and then did not step away. One warm hand came up against the side of Reno's face, lifting his chin so their eyes met. It was hard to meet that inquisitive stare without blinking. For being from Wutai, the guy was hella tall.

"How long have you been using candathine?"

It was entirely not the question Reno expected, and it startled honesty out of him. "Almost a year, now." It wasn't really a secret, he supposed. The materia-based drug was responsible for the unnatural glare in his green eyes, the dilated pupils. Anyone could see it if they knew what to look for.

Xi took a sip of his drink, but did not release Reno's face or his gaze. This close, he smelled like his amaretto, and cloves. "Cello-tabs, or needles?"

Reno swallowed, but it didn't soften the dry lump in his throat. "Single doses with sterile one-use sharps," he said, almost defensively. "My regular wants me high when he fucks me."

Xi made a derisive sound, as a gourmand presented with an entirely inappropriate choice of wine.

Reno thought about Angelo's glasses, and Katie's seventh birthday next week, and tried not too sound too desperate when he added, "He knows better than to shoot me up with dirty needles." His smile was probably too bitter for when he was on, but the memory of the luminous green syringes made his stomach clench. "He'd have to buy out my contract if he gave me something."

Xi still did not answer, studying Reno's face as though there was something written there only he could see.

_Shiva help me, Bansu_ , Reno thought, fury hot behind his eyes, _if you lose me this trick because of your goddamn candy, I'm never fucking blowing you again_.

Xi seemed to reach a conclusion that satisfied him. "As long as you never do it here, or bring anything in with you. Is that clear?"

Reno let out his breath. "Don't worry, I hate the shit."

"Then we agree," Xi murmured, and ran his thumb slowly over the curve of Reno's lower lip in the first gesture of interest he had shown so far. Something flickered for the first time in his eyes, and the knot at the bottom of Reno's spine started to uncurl. This was more like it. "You have specialties, I presume?"

For anyone else, Reno would have whipped the laminated price card out of his wallet, but it seemed a cheap, lower-level sort of thing to do here. And for all his cold sharp edges, Reno found himself liking Tony's classy regular client and not a little bit jealous of his golden blond coworker for having him. "Anything you like."

Xi smiled then, just the slightest tightening of his lips, but the effect it had on his face was remarkable. "I'm sure you realize I have high standards," he said, and his hand slid away from Reno's face as he settled down in the plush leather sofa, tumbler dangling from his tapered fingers. "Shall we see what you can do?"

"You're the boss." Reno took a drink from his glass without tasting a drop of it, and knelt down on the plush carpet between his client's knees. He had a routine, as any of them did: a line or two of dirty-talk, a well executed grope, or in most cases for Reno, just getting shoved face-down in the nearest mattress. Being asked to show what he could do was a novel experience for him. Somehow the usual didn't seem to fit, here.

He slid his palms up his client's thighs, watching Xi's face through lowered lashes. Reno thought there might be more of a glitter in those dark eyes than before, but it was hard to tell.

_Chill the hell out and do what you do_ , Reno told himself, trying not to let Xi unnerve him. _Unless he's got two dicks, he's not anything you haven't done before_. Reno leaned forward, letting his arms go around Xi's waist, and nuzzled the soft folds of suit fabric between his client's legs. The heat under Reno's mouth was promisingly hard, and Reno pressed his face in more, mouthing the shape of it. Xi was actually interested, and that was more than enough to dispel Reno's doubts. He wasn't the best rentboy in lower sixth because of anything lacking in the confidence department.

Xi sighed softly through his nose, and Reno knew, without being told, that it was time for something a little more intimate. The leather belt unraveled in his fingers as he undid the top button and zipper, his hand sliding into the front of dark silk boxers and easing Xi's heavy, aching cock out.

"Beautiful like the rest of you," Reno said brushing soft hot skin with his cheek, and his client made a noise that might have been a laugh.

"Flattery is your specialty, Mr. Montague?" He was not breathless, but his voice was not as smooth as it had been at the bar.

"No," Reno said, bending down, tongue flickering out over hot salty skin. "This is."

Xi made a deep sigh of satisfaction, the sofa creaking under their combined weight as Reno pressed him down and swallowed him to the base.

It was lucky for Reno, and something probably not a good idea for a man in his position to admit, but he really liked sucking cock. It took more art, in his opinion, than just lifting up his ass for someone to screw him, and there was a finesse and a challenge in it that he considered the best of his services. He distanced himself from it as he did from most of his duties, the better to focus on the finer points of technique. Xi didn't seem to have any complaints as Reno's mouth curled lovingly over the elegant weight of his sex, pulling back enough to cradle the flushed head. The tip of his tongue stabbed sweetness from the tip, and his client made a sound then that did something it wasn't supposed to, not yet.

Against the tight confines of his jeans, Reno felt his own body hardening in answer.

Not as though Reno never got turned on, doing his job. It was, after all, what he was supposed to do. But it caught him off guard. It also made him a little more hasty in his ministrations than he would normally be, as though to make up for his own ache by making his client come faster.

Xi said something under his breath, but what it was, Reno didn't catch, maybe even something in Wutai. His thighs stiffened under Reno's hands, and Reno, pressing his own aching cock into the hard edge of the sofa, became merciless. Xi's breath caught, only once. His hand was tangled in Reno's hair, his hips lifting slightly off the cushion. Reno felt the spasm run the whole elegant length of Xi's cock, and swallowed.

Other boys might have been done then, but Reno waited, his face pressed into soft silk and softer skin, until his client was sated in his mouth, and sleepy against his tongue.

It was, Reno figured, one of the best parts about the whole thing.

Xi slowly freed his hand from Reno's hair. "...Anyone else would have gone for the drink by now."

Reno let him slide out but lingered, scattering kisses over Xi's flat belly, resting his head against his client's thigh. "I'm not anyone else."

"No." Xi seemed to be considering him for the first time. "That much is clear." He set aside his glass, which he had been holding the whole time, and the ice had long since melted. "Let's move this to a more appropriate location." 

Reno was obliged to stand up first, and something about his face or the way his ground his hips against Xi's knee on the way up must have been telling. Even if it wasn't, his jeans weren't designed to leave much to the imagination.

Xi's lips twitched only a little, wryly. "I take it you enjoy your work."

"Not usually," Reno admitted, and his voice was rough. He coughed, and reached for his drink, tossing it back melted ice and all.

His client watched the motion of Reno's throat and then stood and undid the buttons of Reno's shirt with as much ease as any rentboy. He ran warm fingertips over Reno's collarbone, then down over the tense muscles of his belly. "I'm flattered, then," He said, and slid a hand between Reno's legs, over the constricting denim and squeezing the ache there. Reno's eyelids fluttered, and he couldn't quite stop the noise that came out of him. Xi put his smile close to Reno's ear and murmured, "Take them off."

Reno's fingers hurried to obey, undoing buttons and zippers and peeling out of his jeans without meeting Xi's eyes until his clothes were in a discarded pile, and the only thing still on him were his client's hands.

Reno closed his eyes as they moved over him, tracing his shoulder blades and stomach, cupping the cleft between his buttocks, but nowhere Reno wanted it the most. Reno gritted his teeth in mingled need and aggravation; he was too pro to be in a state this bad this soon. But then he hadn't gotten his pro status with clients like this one.

Xi's mouth found his neck, and his client's clothed warm body pressed up against him from behind, and fingers closed on his cock, pumping it gently. "I don't think you'll last long enough for me to fuck you," Xi murmured thoughtfully over Reno's shoulder. His silver cufflinks were cold, trickling below Reno's navel.

Reno had a witty rejoinder for that, but oddly enough the only thing that came out of him was a stuttered moan. It wasn't his fault, he told himself. He was trained for nouveau riche drug-runners and spoiled, impatient rich boys like Bansu. Xi was so far outside that sphere, that Reno felt practically virginal.

His client laughed then, a low sound of breath, and the hand on him squeezed a little more firmly. "I like your honesty," Xi said, and his mouth was on Reno's earlobe, his jaw. Dark hair had escaped Xi's ponytail and slid over Reno's face: the source of the man's spicy, exotic smell. "Come for me," he said, and his other hand cupped the soft vulnerable weight of Reno's balls. "Standing here, just like this."

"Ah--" Reno reached behind him for support but still he felt like he was falling, the finish overtaking him too soon. It was just as well his client had ordered him to, because Reno found himself doing as he was asked, spilling up over his stomach and Xi's coaxing hands, coming as though he wasn't getting paid for it.

When it was over he hung limp and sweaty from Xi's arms, thighs sticky, shuddering for air.

Xi made a small considering sound over Reno's state and drew a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket. "Hm. I suppose now is an ideal time to show you the Jacuzzi."

  


Reno woke up the next morning alone. It took a moment for the usual disorientation to pass, trying to remember where he was, the face of whomever he had slept with the night before. In this case, it didn't take him long to remember.

He rolled over, blinking at the clock. It was well past checkout time, and with any other client, Reno would long since have been rudely awakened in only enough time to get his clothes back on, collect his tip, and stagger onto the train back to the lower levels. The smell of coffee got him out of bed and back into the main room in the hopes of finding both its source, and his pants. Instead he found breakfast from room service and a plain white envelope propped against the single china cup.

"Xi?"

His client's overcoat was gone, and the penthouse was clearly empty. The bank of windows that made up the wall showed a cold, gritty skyline; the ShinRa building was a looming leviathan in the smoggy haze. Reno opened the envelope, and choked on the swallow of coffee he had just taken. What Xi called a tip Reno called a full night's wages, and Reno's copy of the receipt faxed in from the Pavilion did not have the substitute deduction docked from it. Reno had been paid as though he had been Xi's regular, and not a fill-in.

The amount of money Tony blew on his girlfriend suddenly made a lot of sense. He counted the crisp, new gil notes three times, figuring up not only immediate needs like food and rent and bills, but Christmas wasn't far off, either. The thought of that date no longer made a cold, heavy feeling in Reno's stomach. Before his dad had died, the holidays had been, if not decadent, at least comfortable. It was something his youngest sisters could not even remember. Maybe this year wouldn't be so bad, after all.

Reno found his clothes and slipped the envelope in his pocket, taking one last look around the Penthouse. There was nothing to give any clue about the man who had rented the rooms, and Reno supposed that he would never know anything about him: his real name, what he did to earn obvious shitloads of money, and how he got the interesting scars along his ribcage, the ones Reno had glimpsed the night before.

For Reno it was back under the plate, for Bansu and his needles and his brothers and sisters and the microscope in the pawnshop window that Angelo walked a block out of his way to look at on the way home every day. The surface was no place for Reno Montague.

"Probably the easiest money I'll ever make," he said to nobody except the tray of danishes, and picked one up on the way out. "Tony, you lucky bastard."

  


The phone was ringing shrilly in an empty house when Reno got home, and he heard the answering machine pick up when he was still standing on one foot, trying to get his boot off. It wasn't yet two, his mother would be working at the store and the vast Montague clan were still in school. Even Phoenix and Diego, who had wanted to quit to find work but didn't after Mrs. Montague put her foot down that one of her sons dropping out of school was more than enough. Angelo must have been feeling better enough to go, although it would take more than a head cold to keep that one away from class.

Reno finally got his foot free of the boot, and took enough gil for the week's train fare out of the envelope. The rest he put in the cookie jar on the counter, the ancient ceramic one shaped like a moogle with one long-broken ear.

His mother was no fool not to know how the money got in there with the meager scraps of change left over from her part-time shift at the item shop. What she earned was not near enough keep food on the table and wolves away from the door without what Reno added in. But she never asked where Reno went, and Reno never told her, and it was an uneasy truce in the household.

_Sorry to bother you at home again_ , Tony said, on the voice message. _But I want to take the rest of the week off to take care of Cere. I'm booked with Xi three more nights next week... could you take them?_

Reno grinned and clicked the top of his ballpoint pen. Could he ever.

_And it's a girl_ , Tony added, pride coming right through the tinny recording. _Eight pounds. Call me back and let me know about next week, would you?_

Reno picked up the receiver and cradled it under his chin, punching Tony's cell number.

Maybe he'd get a chance to ask about those scars, after all.


	2. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...It's no way to make a living.

_for the night sky is an ocean_  
 _black distant sea_  
 _washing up to my window_  
 _all the stray dog night owl junkies_  
 _orphans vagabonds_  
 _angels who lost their halos_  
  
 _if nothing else i can dream_  
 _i can dream_  
 _i'll never tell never tell_  
 _all i've seen_  
 _right in front of me_  
 _like the ghost of everything that i could be_  
 _in the cool and callous grip of reality_  
-Over the Rhine, "If Nothing Else"

  


It was snowing above the plate. Reno had let two trains go by without getting on, lingering in the station to watch it fall. Naturally, in the slums, it never snowed; not with the groaning weight of the plate for a roof. It didn't rain either, and if the sun ever shone on Midgar, the people underneath never saw it.

It was either hot or cold, nothing else, and Reno's good mood wouldn't let him hurry to head back down.

He had spent the morning in an upper fourth cafe, taking advantage of his surface permit, drinking a coffee and looking across the street where a department store was putting up holiday Christmas displays. It was a luxury that he didn't often afford himself, but with Xi's last tip burning in his pocket, he didn't feel too bad for taking it.

His clothes still smelled like cappuccino and Xi's expensive cigarettes, and he was whistling when he finally shook the snow out of his hair and got on the train. Things had certainly been looking up lately for him. He was taking at least half of Tony's nights with Xi, about two a week, and the extra boost to the cookie jar was more than welcome in the Montague household.

And somehow, waking up alone in Xi's penthouse the mornings afterwards, Reno didn't feel quite so used up inside. Sometimes he could even forget he was merchandise.

The train came to a stop at the station in lower fourth and Reno stepped out. It was a Saturday, everyone would be home. Maybe he wouldn't go to bed right away; instead he could stay up with the kids. With the extra days on his shift schedule, it felt like he hadn't seen anybody except his clients for three weeks straight.

"Late for you to be rolling in, isn't it, Reno?"

Reno's thoughts came to an abrupt, derailed stop. Standing in the dim gleam of the streetlight was a slim boy, probably younger than Reno himself was, but with an unnatural light in his eyes that took any hint of innocence from his face.

"Hey," Reno said, trying to keep the trepidation from his voice. "I didn't even know you came out in daylight, Bansu."

Reno's regular client pushed himself up off the lamppost with a noise of disgust. "There isn't any daylight under the plate, Montague."

"Yeah," Reno said, glancing up at the streetlights that were lit even though it wasn't yet noon. "Is that why my electric bill's so goddamn high?"

Bansu examined his nails carefully, his short copper hair covering the candathine light in his eyes. "I might be able to help you out with that, if you're free."

Reno went very still. "It's not Tuesday, Bansu. The Pavilion won't let you hire me unless it's been a week. You know the rules for candy clients--"

"I know what I hear, Reno." Bansu still hadn't looked up, and the unpleasant feeling in Reno's stomach began to spread like cold water down his belly. "And I hear you've got a new regular, some rich bastard up top."

Reno spread his hands, making his voice as bland as possible. "Up top? Oh, naah. That's Tony's guy. I just picked up a few rain dates for him. Cere had her baby, you know, so Tony--"

Bansu could move awfully fast, when he wanted. Anybody but Reno or the other members of Bansu's gang might have dismissed him on youth and size, but Reno knew better. Bansu was heartless even when he wasn't high, and Reno had seen him kill men twice his size for no reason beyond a perceived insult. Bansu's father had money, more than enough to pay off the Pavilion if Reno turned up with his throat slit in an alley.

Reno wasn't Bansu's friend, he was his property. And property could be replaced. "I don't care about Tony," Bansu purred. "I'm just saying, Reno. I hear things. what if you decide you like this surface pissant more than me?" His fingers curled in the lapels of Reno's jacket, his smile like the edge of his favorite knife, the one Reno could see tucked neatly in a sleeve holster at Bansu's wrist. "You'd break my heart, Reno. You know you're the only one worth having."

Reno swallowed. This was way too dicey for his liking, and a prostitute getting knifed at noon right in front of the train station wouldn't even cause a ripple, not in the slums. "I'll make it up to you, baby." He tucked his fingers in Bansu's belt loops, shifting their hips together suggestively. "I promise. Just as soon as the Pavilion'll let me--"

"Screw the Pavilion," Bansu murmured, his eyes hungry on Reno's mouth. "You can take cash like a good boy, can't you? Your manager doesn't need to know, now does he?"

Arguing legality wasn't going to get Reno very far here, not with an addict. "Look, Bansu--"

"I'll double your fee," Bansu whispered. "I know you better than you think, Reno. You like money better than anything, even some upper bastard's cock and your conglomerate's stupid rules."

Reno didn't answer, considering. Bansu wrapped his arms around Reno's neck, so the hard edge of the concealed knife hilt bit down on Reno's shoulder.

"Triple," Bansu offered. "Don't make me beg, Reno."

Somewhere inside of him, Reno apologized for the day he wasn't going to have, the brothers and sisters he was going to disappoint. On the outside, he flashed a smile that couldn't have had a single regret behind it. "Anything you want, Bansu."

  


It was well after midnight when he got home. He would have been there hours before, as soon as Bansu passed out, empty syringe dangling from his fingers, but Reno had to let the candathine wear off enough for him to stand up. So instead he lay flat on his back in Bansu's bed as the room spun around him, until the memory of luminous green liquid burning down a needle into his skin was enough to make his stomach twist, and he staggered in the bathroom and retched.

Bansu slept through it all, but Reno knew by now not only to get his fee first, but to put it in his pocket before he took his pants off. There was no guarantee he would remember to do it afterwards.

It took him twice as long to get home as it should have, staggering away from assailants real and imagined, forcing one foot in front of the other. All he wanted was to put the fistful of gil away with the rest of his earnings and never think to hard about what it had cost him to earn it.

And then to sleep away the drug until morning.

In the darkness of the cramped living room Reno bashed his knees into a coffee table that had clearly lunged out to trip him, and a lamp fell over with a crash. Reno was still swearing when someone said his name.

"Reno? Man, I thought someone was robbing the place."

Reno jumped as though he really had been a thief, and then flung up his arms in front of his face when the elder of the twins righted the lamp and turned it on. "Goddammit, Phoenix, are you trying to kill me?"

"Sorry," Phoenix whispered, clicking the lamp down to a lower setting. "Don't yell, you'll wake everybody up. Except Diego, he's got the cold finally." He paused, realizing Reno wasn't answering him, and his elder brother's hands were still in front of his face. "Reno? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Reno snapped, and when Phoenix flinched at the volume, Reno added, more quietly, "Sorry. Just not feeling too hot."

Phoenix nodded immediately. "Sit down, I'll get you a drink."

Reno flung himself into one of the rickety kitchen chairs, watching with blurred vision as Phoenix clicked on the stove light and ran tap water in a glass for his brother. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

"Couldn't sleep, you should hear the sounds Diego's making." He grinned, trying to smooth down hopelessly rumpled cropped red hair. "It's okay. No school tomorrow, or anything."

Reno took the glass and emptied it of its contents, then put his face down on his arms. The linoleum creaked as Phoenix shifted his weight.

"Reno? You sure you're all right?"

Reno considered the question, and found himself laughing, laughing until his shoulders shook and tears came out of his eyes.

Phoenix took a step backwards. "Hey... I'm gonna go get Ma, okay?"

"No!" The chair flew backwards and Reno had his brother by the arm, his green eyes nothing but iris, some terrible, nameless emotion written on his face. "Don't you fucking _dare_ let her see me like this, do you understand? Not _ever_. If you tell her I'll--" Reno's face twisted.

"I won't," Phoenix whispered. His own eyes, dim by comparison, were huge in his face. "...That hurts."

Reno looked down at his white knuckled hand on his brother's arm as though wondering how it got there, and let go like he was burned. "I'm sorry," he breathed, and put both hands on Phoenix's shoulders, butting his head against his chest. "I'm sorry, Phoenix, I'm sorry--"

Phoenix didn't say anything, righting Reno's chair and getting his brother into it, then leaving him there, face in his hands, while he quietly made two cups of instant coffee. "You should quit, you know," he said, as the battered teapot steamed.

Reno laughed again, but it was an entirely different sound than before. "I don't do this to myself, Phoenix."

"I'm not talking about the drugs," Phoenix thunked a chipped mug down in front of his brother, and straddled a chair beside him. "You should stop letting people fuck you for money."

Reno looked up, blinked hard at his brother to dispel afterimages. "You knew."

"I'm fifteen, Reno, I'm not stupid." Phoenix stared at the surface of his coffee. "None of us are stupid." He looked up at Reno, his eyes somehow as desperate as Reno's had been before. "You don't have to do this, you know? There's gotta be another way--"

"There isn't," Reno said. "Not for me. This was all there was, Phoenix." He added, "It's not always this bad," but couldn't quite meet Phoenix's eyes when he said so. "I'm doing this for you guys."

"We didn't ask you to." Phoenix's fingertips were white on the ceramic mug. "You should quit."

"And we'd be out on the street in two months," Reno snapped. "Is that what you want?"

"I'm old enough to work," Phoenix insisted, coffee sloshing out of the mug onto the table. "If I quit school--"

"No." Reno said, and when Phoenix opened his mouth again, Reno shut him up with a gesture. "No, now you listen. Look at this." Reno dug his hands in his pockets and pulled out the contents, dumping them on the table. Several thousand gil in crumpled bills, foil packets of Black Odin condoms, his train pass, his prostitution permit, half a pack of cigarettes, a mostly empty lighter. His eyeliner bounced and rolled under the table. "This is what it gets you. It's a shitty living and I'm not proud of it but it's something I can do, Phoenix. It's something I can live with and trust me, down here, there's a whole hell of a lot worse. I was never any good at school, you know I only got in fights, even when Dad was still alive. But I'm good at this. And if it keeps any of the rest of you from doing it and bills paid, then goddamn it I will keep doing it, or whatever else it takes, as long as someone's willing to pay me."

Phoenix swallowed, nodding. "I understand."

"You're just better than this, Phoenix." Reno smoothed out a 500 gil note with the side of his hand. "You, Diego, Angelo, Jess, all the girls, you're all better than that. Better than me. You guys still have dreams, right?" Reno stuffed everything but the money back in his pockets. "Don't give them up so easy."

Phoenix rubbed his wrist over his eyes. "You're not fair," he said. "Don't you want anything for yourself?"

"Yeah," Reno grinned. "I want to see every last one of us get out of here." He took a long swallow of his coffee, and scooped up the money to put in the cookie jar.

"You don't have anything left for yourself, do you?" Phoenix whispered.

Reno let the money fall in on top of yesterday's earnings, and ran his hands down the sides of the cookie jar. It wasn't that old, as he recalled. Maybe new when Angelo was little. He remembered it like that, not chipped like it was now, the moogle with its forced smile in spite of broken ears and the faded paint on the pom-pom handle. Reno shook his head. He must still be high, to feel kinship with a cookie jar. "I made all my choices a long time ago, Phoenix." He put his back to the moogle and its belly full of gil. "C'mon, tell me what you want, how you're gonna make this place kiss your ass."

Phoenix smiled, just a little. "Well there was one thing..." He paused, considering. "I think I'd really like to learn to fly. They use a lot of choppers up top, right?"

"Yeah," Reno said, pulling out one of his cigarettes and lighting it. "...Don't tell Ma, okay?"

Phoenix grinned. Some secrets were easier to keep. "You know I won't."

"Go on, about the choppers." Reno took a deep, grateful breath of smoke, glad for a drug he understood.

"There wasn't anything else. Just I think it would be nice, to take off from the plate and never look down." Phoenix looked up, as though he could see the night sky through roof and plate and steel and smog, and looking at him there, Reno believed he could.

Phoenix returned to ground, obviously embarrassed. "I hadn't told anybody except Diego... it seemed kinda stupid--"

"It's not stupid." Reno took a drag off his cigarette. He felt slow and wrung-out, all that was left of the drug in him. "But what is stupid is you being up, still. It's almost four."

Phoenix frowned. "You're not going out again?"

"I'm off tomorrow," Reno said. "But I'll sleep down here on the couch, okay?"

"Okay." Phoenix slid out of the chair, standing beside it uneasily before suddenly colliding into Reno's chest, hugging him hard enough to hurt. "I'd take you with me," he said into Reno's shoulder, fierce and desperate at the same time. "If I ever get out of here, I'll take us all."

"Then it's a deal," Reno said, flicking his cigarette into the sink, wrapping his arms around his brother. "Whoever gets out first takes the others. You try it flying, and I'll keep trying my way, and we'll see who wins."

"Deal," Phoenix said, thickly.

"We're the oldest, you know, we gotta look out for 'em." Reno scruffed his brother's hair and Phoenix pulled away, embarrassed. "Now go get some sleep."

"All right," Phoenix said. "You too."

"Kid, this counter is the only thing keeping me up."

"Goodnight, Reno." Phoenix gave his brother one last look, and then made his way into the dark living room. Reno heard him creaking up the stairs, the floorboards shifting overhead as he went into the bedroom.

"Goodnight, Phoenix-down." He was probably asleep by the time Reno dumped the cold coffee in the sink and washed away the cigarette. He patted the moogle on the head before flinging himself full length on the couch, and closing his eyes. Sleep caught up to him mercifully fast, peaceful and heavy and full of other people's dreams.


	3. Opportunities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preliminary job screening.

_everybody's story is more_   
_interesting than mine_   
_it took me twenty-some-odd-years_   
_to see i'd been born blind_   
  
_so i just feel my way to you_   
_i try to keep you close_   
_i'm never very good at getting_   
_what i need the most_   
-Over the Rhine, "Farpoint Diary"

  


Reno blinked awake to the sound of a cell phone ringing.

Every other time, Xi had been long gone by the time he woke up. His pay, the breakfast tray, the Midgar skyline, all of it was repeated perfectly as though it was a replay of a surveillance video, and Reno could not say that one thing was ever out of place.

He felt the motion of the bed as Xi got up, heard the "Yes?" as he answered his phone. So much for Xi saying his name. Reno kept his eyes open a slit to see.

In the gray light of the penthouse, it could not be dawn yet. Xi was silhouetted against the shadowy window, his undone hair covering his face and hiding the strange mark between his brows. Reno wondered about that mark, and about the scars again as the dim light caught them. They looked like nothing so much as bullet kisses along his client's ribs. There were no other marks on him. Reno had looked, but had never been willing to risk asking. "You found it, I hope?"

Reno's fingers curled involuntarily in the coverlet. He could not hear the other end of the conversation, but Xi's voice was the same toneless one it had been when they first met, impersonal, cold.

"I don't want him talking, Raife."

Reno's eyes flicked to the half-empty hotel glass of water on the side table, his suddenly dry throat constricting with longing. But he didn't move.

Xi drummed his fingers on the back of the armchair, frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. "...Erase him. Now."

Suddenly Reno's heart was going so loud, he began to wonder if Xi could even hear the conversation over it. Reno prided himself on keeping tabs on his situation, just like he had seen the thug on the train, reflected clearly in the window before he had tried to jump Reno. He thought himself cool under pressure, capable of sliding through most danger unscathed. But part of that was knowing when he was outclassed, when to surrender, when to fight, and when to run. The urge to run was very strong, now.

It wasn't it the first time that he thought Xi was probably involved in something monumentally illegal, or quite possibly in charge of it. Drug runners and felons were one thing though, professional hitmen--or worse, people so above the law that they ordered professional hitmen around-- were something else entirely. There was a level of expertise there that under-plate thugs lacked, as calm as Xi's order to end a man's life.

"I'm on my way." Xi clicked the phone closed and reached for his shirt, folded neatly with the rest of his clothes on the chair. Xi had never let Reno so much as loosen his tie, and Reno had wondered if it was just a matter of personal preference, or something more interesting.

He had his answer now, as Xi buttoned the cuffs of his shirt, slid his tie clip into place, and then carefully checked the clip of an elegant, snub-nosed pistol before thumbing the safety off and slipping it back into its shoulder holster.

Reno was used to clients who carried weapons. None of that was particularly off-putting to anyone who had grown up in the slums, where most of the doddering grandmothers packed an old buntline .45 along with their walkers. But the fact that Reno never once for a second suspected that Xi might be armed made his stomach do a funny little sideways jiggle. Xi's holster had passed totally under Reno's radar, even though he had actually watched the man undress the night before, and other nights besides. Not to mention groping him on a regular basis.

Xi caught up his hair in both hands, sweeping it back and looping the ponytail holder around it with the ease of long practice, then shrugged into his suit jacket and zipped it. Reno flattened against the pillow as Xi reached into his jacket as though for his gun, but he only pulled from the inner pocket a pair of simple, black fingerless gloves and buckled them around his wrists.

Reno suddenly decided now would be a good time to pretend to be asleep. His heart almost stopped when he sensed Xi coming close to the edge of the bed, and he wondered if Xi had known he was watching, and if he might have found out more than he should know.

Reno was braced for a bullet, but what he got was one of Xi's hands brushing his hair back from his face, the scent of leather from his gloves as he ran a fingertip over Reno's lower lip. A moment later, the front door of the penthouse closed with a decisive click.

It was still a long time before Reno felt like it was safe to open his eyes.

  


Wall Market was starting to die down for the night when Reno left the Silk Pavilion at the end of his shift. It was his floating night and for once, he wasn't sorry at the lack of walk-in clientele. This close to the holiday it wasn't uncommon for business to slow down a bit, and it usually put a real crank in his family plans. But adding Xi to his schedule meant he didn't feel the pinch quite so hard when nobody hired him for hourly rates in the Pavilion's upper rooms. He was halfway down the steps and considering a cold beer before catching the train back to fourth when he heard one of the new boys call after him.

Reno turned around and scanned for a name in his memory, and caught it right in time. "Hey... Vic. Something wrong?"

Vic was sixteen, the same as Reno had been when he was legal to start, but somehow with his huge dark eyes, he managed to look younger than Phoenix. He was pulling on his coat as he came out the door. "Hey, Reno. You live in fourth, right? You mind if I catch the train with you?"

Reno shrugged. "I was gonna head to the bar first, izzat okay?"

Vic nodded. "If you don't mind me coming along?" He glanced uneasily into the dark alley next to the Pavilion's neon-lit steps, and Reno raised his eyebrows.

"Nooo. But maybe you should tell me what's going on, first?"

Vic raked one hand through heavily gelled dark hair, obviously uncomfortable. "They ah... they had to ban my regular, after tonight." He rolled back one sleeve, enough for Reno to see the ugly purple splodges of recent bruises. "I finally reported him." Vic shucked his sleeve back down hastily, as though he didn't want anyone else passing by the entrance to see. "I don't want him to find me on the way home."

Reno's face softened. "C'mon. I'll buy you a coffee."

  


Reno's bar of choice was a hole in the wall joint tucked into an alley behind the Honey Bee. It had never, to Reno's knowledge, been closed. It also never carded, since most of the patrons didn't have their own names on any of their many id cards anyway. Its prominent feature was the pool table in the center of the room, with exactly ten barstools, and mismatched chairs and tables.

At this hour, there wasn't much of a crowd to speak of. Most of the regulars were leaving as Vic and Reno came in, and only a few of the barstools remained occupied. Reno got a cup of hot gritty coffee for Vic, and a bottle of Sylkis Green for himself that might, almost, have been cold.

"It was brave," Reno said, after Vic had spent ten minutes slowly turning his mug around without drinking it. "What you did."

Vic shrugged with one shoulder. "Just couldn't take it anymore," he said, smile flickering and then gone. Reno felt a twinge of pity. "You know how it feels, when you get pushed to that point, you know? Like you can't bend anymore."

Reno considered the wrinkled label of his beer bottle. "...yeah." He paused, laughed into the bottle. "At least, I used to. Maybe I broke a long time ago."

Vic shook his head. "No way. If I was half as... tough..." Vic's voice died at exactly the same moment Reno noticed someone was blocking the light from the bar.

"Geeze," he said, glaring up. "Get your own table--" Reno checked himself, realizing that the closest of the three unsavory men was familiar in a way he didn't like, and that next to him Vic had gone an unhealthy shade of white under his eyeliner. "Hey, have I kicked your ass before?"

The man put both hands on the rickety table, ignoring Reno entirely and bouncing Vic's coffee onto the floor. The mug broke with a crash in the suddenly silent bar. "What's the matter, Viky? You're not glad to see me?"

"I've got a restraining order," Vic said, his voice ghostly in his throat. "You keep the hell away from me, Taj."

Reno blinked down at the artless tattoos snaking like graffiti up Taj's arm, and remembered them reflected backwards in a train window. His eyebrows went down. "Let me guess, you're the bastard that likes beating up on kids."

"Taj ain't talking to you, bitch," one of the cronies snarled at Reno. "This is private business."

Reno stood up slowly, and there was more than candathine in his glare. "You beat up one of our boys, and I _make_ it my business, asshole."

There was a quick, surprisingly graceful motion of wrists and elbows and Reno was suddenly facing a shining array of butterfly knives and spiked knuckles. The silence in the bar became a hasty roar as the few remaining patrons made a judicious exit.

"You want to start some shit, huh?" Reno growled. "Do it and I'll finish it for you."

Taj snorted. "What, you gonna do, girly boy? Wave your underpants at us?"

Reno had a very good comeback for that that he never made.

"Leave them alone."

Taj whirled, but the only person left in the bar was a hunched figure on a stool near the door, tilting his bottle back. Dim light flashed over sunglasses and the bristling ear piercings glittering on a shaved head. He wore a dark suit that Reno seemed to recognize, but he didn't have time to consider that.

"Mind your own business, shithead!" Taj growled, while his friends made supportive obscene gestures. The man at the bar lowered his bottle, unperturbed, and didn't bother answering.

"Vic," Reno said in an undertone, while Taj and his compatriots were occupied. "I want you to go out the back and have Alec take you to the station. He's the bouncer, he's got a green mohawk. I'll make sure they don't follow you."

Vic glanced once at his tormentors, but Reno jerked his head to the back door, and Vic bolted. One of the cronies saw him making a break for it, and took a step after him, but Taj threw up one of his badly-illustrated arms to stop him.

"Let him go," Taj said, summing up Reno with yellow eyes. "I think I'm in the mood for something with a little more spunk."

Reno heard the back door slam, and managed to show every single one of his teeth in his grin. "You gotta catch me first, fuckers," he said, and flung the table up in their faces.

_Dammit, I didn't even finish my beer_ , Reno thought, skidding up against the bar and groping under it for a projectile. _They better not go for the face-- I need it in one piece for work_. Getting killed didn't even cross his mind. His fingers latched on something promising and he swung his arm back, putting a bottle of 1000 Needles Tequila square in the face of the nearest thug.

"Shiva's skivvies, Montague," he muttered, to nobody in particular, "did you have to grab the good stuff?" He made a face at the loss and hopped the bar right past the shaved guy in the suit, who was still drinking his lager as if there was nothing more exciting than a game of pool going on around him. Gotta give the guy points for cool, Reno thought, flinging bottles at Taj and his one active peon, diving back under with a wave of auburn ponytail as a trio of throwing knives splintered the bar next to his head.

The guy at the bar wrenched them free one-handed, and passed them blandly to Reno. "Here."

"What?" Reno said, all innocence from under the taps. "Those aren't _mine_." He accepted them with a grin. "But I'll be happy to give them back!"

Taj made a dive behind a booth as his knives whizzed back at him.

The guy at the bar made a noise that might actually have been a chuckle.

Reno vaulted over the bar on the opposite side, coming up around the corner, grabbing a barstool, and swinging it into the stomach of the closest assailant.

It was only enough to slow him down, and things were getting really sticky now, as the first thug had shaken off broken glass and tequila and was moving forward to extract damages from the other side, and Reno was stuck in the middle, with Taj pulling something that looked alarmingly like a handgun out of the waistband of his pants.

_Shit_ , Reno thought, with feeling. He was almost convinced that it was his subconscious that said above him, "Duck." A beer bottle was placed carefully on the bar, empty.

Far be it from Reno to ignore promptings from above... even only about six feet eight inches above. He dove as the guy in the suit made a quick deft gesture above him, and the two cronies' skulls cracked together. They crumpled in an unattractive heap at Reno's feet.

"Thanks--" Reno began, but was stalled in his gratitude, as the empty bottle and several pilsner glassed exploded next to him on the bar, and Taj took aim for another shot.

Reno quite simply stopped thinking. He was closer, and he still was holding the barstool. He blocked out the tiny bursts of wood and glass around him, bullets coming for his life, and just ran. Low on ammo now, Taj suddenly chose the other target that was twice as big as Reno, and wasn't moving.

The guy at the bar.

Time ground to a halt. Reno gathered up everything he had in a last volley of speed, and lunged.

The next time the gun went off it was slightly off target, knocking the sunglasses off of Reno's unexpected ally and shattering the mirror behind the bar. It would have taken off the guy's entire shaved head, except that Reno's barstool landed on Taj at that exact moment, breaking both the seat and the thug's face.

For a moment there was no sound in the bar except for the slow drip of a punctured keg, Reno's heavy breathing, and glass sparkling down out of the mirror frame. Reno looked at the broken stool leg he was still holding, and threw it away with a noise of disgust.

" _Ramuh_ ," Reno said, and kicked the unconscious Taj in the ribs for good measure. "You okay over there, buddy?"

Reno's taciturn companion carefully replaced his shades, and brushed idly at the glass powder on his sleeve. "I don't suppose you're looking for a job?"

Reno said, eloquently, "Bwuh?"

"It's none of my business if you prefer your current occupation." The guy in the suit reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and flicked open a silver card case. "What's your name?"

"Reno," Reno said, automatically. "Reno Montague."

A business card was flicked into the hand Reno had held out for an introductory shake, and the stranger reached up to adjust the slightly warped earpiece of his shades. "I'm afraid things are busy at the moment, Mr. Montague, but I'll pass your name along." His boots crunched on broken glass and the spring on the front door shrieked rustily as he pushed it open, adding, "Come by the office the day after the holiday, if you want an interview."

The door banged shut behind him, and Reno was left in the wreckage of the bar with three out-cold thugs and a business card that read:

_Rudolph Alexander_   
ShinRa Electric Power Company   
Department of Administrative Research   
T.U.R.K.S.

  



	4. Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet Reno Montague, age 17. Occupation: Turk.

_i can't change what's come before_   
_build myself some better dreams_   
_and cast off the fear that holds me here_   
  
_give me strength to find the road that's lost in me_   
_give me time to heal and build myself a dream_   
_give me eyes to see the world surrounding me_   
_give me strength to be only me_   
-Over the Rhine, "Give Me Strength"

  


"You're awfully quiet."

Reno started with a muted splash. Xi had turned off the jets in the hot tub and for a long time now they had just been sitting peacefully twined together, Xi's back to Reno's chest, his wet dark hair slicked back over Reno's shoulder.

"Too quiet?" Reno smiled sheepishly, idly twirling one finger in the steaming water, trying not to stare at the line of Xi's profile against the cool marble tile. "Most clients say I don't shut up."

Xi smiled back, without even opening his eyes, as though he knew the look on Reno's face. "You've mentioned before that I'm not most clients."

Reno looked away, to Xi's clothes carefully draped over the rack. He had watched him this time, but still hadn't seen him remove his gun. All the same, Reno knew it was there. "Yeah." He reached up a dripping hand to smooth back his own hair, almost as dark as Xi's when it was wet. "Still, I'm not gonna dump my private life on you." He laced both arms around Xi's chest and nuzzled one surprisingly vulnerable ear. "That's not what you pay me for."

Xi tilted his head away, but he was still smiling. "Indulge me," he said.

Reno took a moment before answering. "This might be my last night."

Xi went suddenly very still in his arms. He opened his eyes, but only looked up at the dim, recessed light fixture above the tub. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said, and the water in the bath seemed to cool by a few degrees before he added, "I hope it's nothing to do with your treatment?"

Reno's arms tightened without his consent. "Are you kidding me? If you were my only client it'd--" Reno stopped talking then. He'd given up on wishful thinking when he was fourteen, and realized none of it would ever bring anyone or anything back. He swallowed. "I have an offer... or maybe just an option. It's nothing solid yet but..." He paused. "It would be above the plate, and it wouldn't be... wouldn't be renting, you know." Xi didn't answer, and Reno hurried to add, "Anyway, It's about time Tony took all his days back instead of some of them, don't you think?"

"I'm flattered by your faith in my prowess, to have two boys on my pay at once," Xi said, his mouth twisting wryly. "But I'm afraid it's misplaced. Mr. Ramirez hasn't been scheduled with me for weeks. Though I'm sure you know it's against your company policy for an employee to have more than one regular client. So I regret to say my status is unofficial. Unless your previous regular feels like relinquishing you."

Reno put his cheek down on Xi's shoulder. There was a dull pressure on his throat like the weight of a small, hard hand, and a yellow needle-pricked bruise that never got the chance to fade on the inside of his elbow. "I'd wind up dead, faster."

Xi reached up a hand to place it, just briefly, against the side of Reno's face. "You must do what is best for you, Reno."

Reno smiled without it reaching his eyes. "I guess, even if I got a job up here, odds of a punk like me hooking up with a guy like you..."

Xi's smile was almost the same as Reno's, if perhaps a little more chagrined. "Very unlikely, I'm afraid."

Reno lowered his eyelids. "Yeah," he said, a little roughly. "Yeah, I thought so." He thought hard about the business card in the pocket of his jeans, wondering if Xi knew anything about the ShinRa, or the Turks. Reno himself only got a vague sense of ominous awe from the words together, and nothing more helpful than half-forgotten rumors. Xi obviously moved in higher circles, he might have some opinion on the matter. And if Xi thought a job with the ShinRa would be a bad move, well then maybe he could have that Raife guy spare a bullet for Bansu, and then Reno would be free to take a full time client, and wouldn't they all just live happily ever after. Reno was laughing long before he had reached the ludicrous conclusion.

"Something funny?" Xi asked, mildly.

Reno shook his head. "Just how stupid life is, sometimes." He ran his fingers over Xi's eyebrows, and Xi must have felt him pause over the smooth, indelibly inked black spot.

"I'll trade you secrets, Mr. Montague," he said.

Reno watched the mark vanish and appear again as his fingertip moved over it, like a waxing and waning moon. "What's it mean?"

"It means I have no father willing to claim me, and in Wutai, it means I cannot inherit any property or a family name. _Kin-jaa_ ," he said, and there was distaste even in the alien word. "'Unwanted person'."

Reno looked around the penthouse bathroom, which was bigger twice over than most entire houses in the slums. "I guess you showed them, huh?"

"Showing them was not my intention so much as survival." He reached up and took Reno's hand away, moving it to someplace more interesting. "You do what it takes for you to survive, Reno." His hips shifted under the water, between Reno's thighs, and he used his other hand to turn the jets back on.

Reno was more than persuaded to change the subject.

He told himself later that there was nothing different about that night. Xi was fond of him, but clearly not interested in buying out his contract and taking him in full time. Nobody did that anymore, anyway, it only happened in overblown musicals like _Loveless_.

The sex was hot, as it always was, but still Reno thought there might have been something different in the way Xi wrapped his hands around Reno's hips, the way he said Reno's name when he came. Both of them lingered in ways they hadn't before, and Reno pressed open-mouthed kisses on the bastard-mark between Xi's brows.

When morning came, and Reno picked up his pay and his pants and his danish from the tray, he looked around the posh suite and realized he was sorry. It wasn't worth letting Bansu bleed Reno's soul out of him to stay, but Reno hadn't really expected regret. His last memory of Xi had been falling asleep on his shoulder the night before.

He didn't suppose he would ever see the man again.

Reno's face closed along with the door, thinking bitterly that he would never understand why everything in his life was always such a goddamn hard trade.

  


Christmas that year was better than it had been since Reno's father died. It was still modest, but Reno had something indefinable in him that made the weight of the plate over him lighter. He would catch himself sometimes, taking the business card out of his back pocket, turning it over and around and reading it again as though scouring it for some clue he had missed, then putting it away like a thief with a prize too fine to keep, and yet too dear to part with.

Phoenix caught him once, sitting in the stairwell and leaning his head against the banister, smiling to himself over the rectangle of cardstock as the rest of the family shouted and waved bright slips of play paper gil over Jess' Christmas board game.

"You've got something," Phoenix said, and Reno quickly made the card vanish in his sleeve.

"What?" Reno said, guilty. Phoenix didn't answer, just eyeing Reno in a knowing way, until Reno at last relented and said, "It's nothing, Nix. Just... just a possibility, that's all. Probably nothing."

"Hope is still something, Ma says--" Phoenix was called away then; it was his turn and Angelina had just plunked yet another hotel on Silence Street.

Reno slowly took the battered card out again, and ran his thumb over the embossed ShinRa logo. "Hope, huh?" He tucked the card in his back pocket, and went over to pester Angelo, who was engrossed with his secondhand microscope and obviously above something so plebian as Monopoly. "Maybe that's it."

He spent the morning losing more imaginary money than he would ever even have in reality, all to Cassie's surprisingly shrewd business sense, and the afternoon snoring on the couch when he fell asleep reading to Katie from her new big picture book.

He woke up with a start, thinking he had overslept into the next day. His nerves were getting the best of him. He busied himself the rest of the evening with Mrs. Montague's rickety ironing board in the living room, trying to make his clothes look presentable for an interview that he still hadn't told anyone about. It was a tricky process, since for one thing Reno never ironed anything except the one time he had accidentally left his permit and 6000 gil in his jeans and washed them, and for the other thing Phoenix and Diego thought it would be a really fun idea to play tackle-football in the living room with Kellie's stuffed tonberry.

After the fourth time the iron got unplugged, he gave it up. It was Christmas no matter what was going to happen the next day, and better suited for more pleasant activates, like telling Angelo repeatedly that he wasn't volunteering any blood samples for the microscope.

He didn't mention the fact that Phoenix and Diego had stolen his cell phone and hidden it in their sock drawer, nor did he comment when he went back in the kitchen for leftover ham and a can of soda, and saw his mother had unhooked the phone jack from the wall.

Lots of things went unsaid these days, in the Montague household.

Reno put a hand over his back pocket, watched the clock, and tried not to hope that soon, things might change.

  


When the first train left fourth for the upper plate the next day, at six in the morning, Reno was on it. He had been awake already for hours, pacing restlessly in the small living room and wondering how on earth he was going to explain three years of previous employment as a rentboy. When the room got too small to contain him he went out on the streets, waiting by the station lamppost and chain-smoking until the train employees came back from their holiday break and opened the gate.

It didn't take him long to get to the ShinRa building, as it was in the very middle of the city and any number of bus routes went by it. Reno opted to walk the six blocks from the station, but it was still barely eight when he reached the plaza in front of the skyscraper, only to have the security guard at the door tell him the building was on holiday hours and wouldn't open until ten.

Reno was ready to explode with impatience, but instead followed the guard's directions to a diner across the street, where he drank enough coffee to make him incontinent for the rest of his days, and read a two-day old newspaper over the shoulder of the guy in the adjacent booth. It was nothing to hold his attention, usually, but Reno had nothing else to focus on except for the bland report of a drive-by shooting on Christmas Eve.

_Somebody had a shitty holiday_ , Reno thought. The old man got up and left before Reno had read enough to get names, and Reno stared out the window, and made tiny wobbling towers of plastic creamer cups until the diner clock ticked to ten.

When the ShinRa Company front desk receptionist got behind her desk and powered up her computer for the day, Reno was standing at the counter, waiting.

"May I help you?" She asked, clearly displeased at having her morning tea and email interrupted by something so bothersome as her job.

"I'm here to see someone about an interview?"

She sighed, and clicked her mouse a few times in an irritated sort of way. "Department?"

Reno's mind went blank in spite of the number of times he had read the card. "Department of ah..." He dug around in his pocket, found the now bedraggled business card, and flipped it right way up. "Umumum... Administrative Research."

The receptionist's bored typing stuttered, just a little. She gave Reno a look that clearly indicated her doubt as to what the Turks would want with a redheaded tart in a snakeskin jacket. "Do you have an appointment?"

Reno's stomach was starting to feel like roadkill, and not from the diner's acidic java offerings. "No. I was just told to come up today." He waved the card at her. "By this guy."

She took it between her thumb and forefinger, as though doubting it was genuine, skimmed it, and pushed it back across the counter at him. Then, to Reno's considerable relief, she slapped a laminated visitor's badge and a clipboard with a pen on a shot-bead chain down next to it. "Forty-second floor," she said, as Reno scrawled his name in the first slot for the day, and jabbed an acrylic nail in the direction of the elevator. "Ask for Tseng. His Admin will take care of you."

Reno clipped the visitor's badge on at a rakish angle, and flashed a wink at the receptionist. "Thanks, sweetheart."

He had the satisfaction of watching her go pink in either pleased shock or fury, and then took the steps to the elevator two at a time, whistling.

The clear glass elevator made his insides lurch around a little, and Reno decided maybe putting his nose against the glass and looking straight down was probably not the best way to handle the situation. Instead he watched the flashing green lights until they lit up to the proper floor, and stepped out into a plush office with lots of plants and an almost ecclesiastical hush.

The receptionist looked up when the elevator dinged, and Reno pretended to take a little longer over the directory of names on the far wall while she wiped her red eyes on an already abused tissue. "I'm so sorry," she said, when she had composed herself a little. "May I help you?" she made the question sound very different than the first secretary.

"I hope so," Reno said, in an attempt to get her to smile. He got one, for all that it was wobbly. "I'm here about an interview?"

"Of course," she said, as grateful for distraction as he was someone nice, and dug around in her files. "I think I saw a memo about an applicant from Rude--" she found the scrap of paper she was looking for, and put it aside. "I'm sorry, Mr. Montague, but Tseng will be in the office late. He's attending a funeral this morning. Do you mind to wait?"

"Funeral?" Reno said, and then noticed that the receptionist's wastebasket was stuffed with crumpled tissues and her face was a mask of composure that was fast crumbling. "I can wait," he said.

"I have some forms for you to fill out, and you can do that down in the waiting area." She tapped her pen towards a door down the hall, and passed Reno a stack of applications that looked thicker than the ones he had to fill out for his prostitution permit. "I'll let you know when he can see you."

"Thanks," Reno said, his hand already cramping at the number of empty boxes on the forms, and the receptionist blew her nose again as he turned the corner to the waiting area.

Twelve pages in, Reno was ready to give up. He'd lost track of the confidentiality and corporate policy and conflict of interest forms he had signed just to have an interview, never mind a job. An hour snailed by and the elevator had dinged so much without stopping that Reno had given up on listening to it.

Until he heard the doors open, and it was like someone had touched an electric wire to his nerves. His hands made damp wrinkles in the paperwork, and he was practically out the door of the room before the receptionist had finished coming in to get him.

She took his papers and vanished, materializing again to show Reno into an office that was spacious without being ostentatious, with one broad desk and a high-backed swivel chair. The blinds were closed. The chair had its back to him, and Reno's paperwork sat untouched on the edge of the desk.

"Hold my calls, Elsa."

The receptionist bowed. "Yes, Sir."

The door closed behind her, and Reno was left facing the chair with its shadowy occupant, alone.

"Rude mentioned earlier in the week that he had met someone promising during an altercation in a bar in Wall Market," the man in the chair said, without any preamble. "I assume that was you?"

Reno coughed once, not sure why the man's voice made all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "Yes."

There was an icy clink, and a hand appeared on the arm of the chair, cradling a tumbler. "Sorry to keep you waiting," he said.

Reno shrugged, even though it was evident this Tseng guy was not looking at him. "Your secretary explained," he said, adding uneasily, "Sorry to hear it. A friend--?"

"An employee." The glass vanished back in the shadow of the chair and when it returned, there was less liquid in it. "And a friend. This is no desk position, I am afraid, and there are certain hazards to consider. Are you prepared for that?"

Reno had a brief flash of the number of times he had risked his life just in the past week, and said, "I'm used to it."

"I see." The glass was empty now. "Take a seat, Mister--" Tseng paused. "I'm afraid Elsa is having a hard morning, she didn't give me your name." He switched the glass to his other hand, picking the top sheet of Reno's application up just as Reno spoke.

"It's Reno. Reno Monta...gue..."

The chair turned around, revealing its occupant, and Reno's voice died away in his throat.

"I'm assuming," Xi said, after a very long silence in which Reno stared at his former client, "that this means we are off for the twenty-ninth."

Reno closed his mouth with a snap. "...Only if I'm hired."

Xi-- or Tseng, Reno corrected himself-- laid the top sheet of Reno's application aside without even sparing it another glance, and rose smoothly up from his chair. "Let's see about getting you a uniform."

"What, that's it?" Reno said, his mind still doing cartwheels in a vain attempt to catch up. "I thought--"

"I trust Rude's judgment implicitly, Reno." Tseng reached into a drawer in one of his cabinets, and removed a small square box. "If he feels you are suitable for the position, I believe him. " Tseng opened the top of the box. "Elsa will see about getting you a suit. This, however, is the true proof of your position." He reached out for Reno's wrist and strapped a gleaming silver watch around it, his hands as impersonal as though they had never touched each other before. "Rude will fill you in on its full functions. Welcome to the Turks, Mr. Montague."

Tseng turned around to go back to his desk, and Reno ran an admiring hand over the deep blue watch face.

"You'll be Rude's new partner," Tseng continued, "since he needs one and seems to like you. I'll tell him you'll meet him tomorrow at eight."

Reno blinked up, surprised. "Wait, don't I have to go through some sort of training, or--"

"I just buried one of my best men today, Reno." Tseng reached up and pulled the blinds, flooding the room with dull, unflattering Midgar winter light. "I'm faced with having to evolve or go extinct, and I choose to evolve. Rude will just have to see to your training as you go." He half turned, and for the first time there was a smile, and the man that Reno had been sleeping with for the past two months. "I know how quickly you catch on to instruction."

Reno felt a hot flush go from the base of his spine to the back of his neck, and he smirked right through it. "So," he said, shifting his hips slightly, "I guess you're not my client anymore."

Tseng's eyes narrowed, but he was still smiling. "No. I'm your boss."

Reno's desktop fantasy deflated with a gasp. "Oh. Right."

Tseng settled back in his chair. "I'm sure you'll work out, Reno." he idly signed the bottoms of Reno's forms, and tucked them into a drawer. "After all, I don't hire just anybody."

  


When Reno stepped onto the elevator again, it was in a deep blue suit that Elsa had told him was the only dress code required, along with a pair of fingerless gloves like the ones 'Xi' had strapped on in the penthouse only a few days ago. Reno looked at himself reflected in the glass of the elevator, and was pleased with his appearance for about the nine seconds it took him to realize he still looked like a rentboy, only a rentboy playing up to someone's salaryman fetish. "About as badass as a box of baby moogles," he grumbled, to his reflection. "This is not going to work."

Frustrated, he unzipped the jacket, and eyed the result. It was a start.

When the elevator reached the bottom floor, the shirt was untucked and unbuttoned, the tie was long gone, and Reno Montague was almost, but not quite, satisfied. One thing still bugged him: the sleek, dark red fall of his hair. It was one of his best features as a prostitute; he took good care of it and it looked good in or out of its tail, with the two precise strands arranged just so over his eyes. Bansu had been particularly fond of it. Reno pulled the tie out of it and he watched it slide through his gloved fingers, considering.

He hopped the afternoon train to sixth and went straight to the Pavilion in Wall Market to deliver news his manager said would put them under in a week. Reno saw Vic heading upstairs with an abashed, handsome older gentleman in spectacles, and said he doubted it. "Do me a favor, though," he said, feeling vindictive. "Bansu forced me to rent for him out of contract, all the time. With needles. I think that's a banning offense for candathine clients, isn't it?"

He was still grinning when he left, and walked around the corner and upstairs to the tiny salon responsible for the Pavilion girls' elaborate coiffures. He handed the girl several thousand gil up front, and instructed her in no uncertain terms to be brutal. She took his advice to heart and Reno came out later sporting red spikes of a color usually reserved for strip joint signage, with only his bangs and a much reduced ponytail remaining.

The street vendor on the corner, hawking everything from fur coats to materia, was quick to offer an opinion. "Looks good, man."

Reno bent over the display of mirrored sunglasses, trying to catch his reflection. "Not bad, huh?" He picked up a pair of shades to get a better look at the ponytail at the nape of his neck, and found himself remembering the sunglasses worn by one Rudolph Alexander, better known as Rude, his partner to be. "Hey, how much?"

The vendor offered a start price that he clearly expected to be talked out off, but Reno paid him the full amount. It just happened to be the last of his prostitution pay from Bansu.

"Thanks," he said, tipping the sunglasses up on his forehead, to keep his bangs out of the way.

"Thank you, buddy," the vendor said, thumbing through the cash, and Reno's permit fluttered out of it. "Hey, ain't this yours?"

Reno looked at the laminated card the vendor held, thinking about the past two years, looking at the tiny photograph of his own face, his thumbprint. "Nope," he said finally. "That's not me." He tapped two fingers against his sunglasses and, turning his back on Wall Market and the confused vendor, caught the first train back home.

  



	5. Partners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On-the-job training.

_the body_   
_is a book_   
_of matches_   
_a little fire_   
_is required_   
_Ohio Blue Tip Strike Anywhere_   
_strike me_   
_anywhere_   
-Over the Rhine, "The Body is a Stairway of Skin"

  


Reno's first official morning of being a Turk was spent by signing his name roughly eleven billion times, and having the photo taken for his ID card.

"What," he asked, when he got the card back, still warm from the printer, and saw it only had 'Reno' printed on it, "no last name?"

"Turks always go by their first names only," the guy at the laminator said, shrugging as he reloaded the plastic film. "Kinda a tradition, but I think it's cos' Tseng doesn't have a last name."

Reno looked down at his own spiky photo, an image of himself he was still getting used to. "Hey," he said, sliding the card into his wallet, "I'm just glad to know his name at all." He left the Human Resources department without bothering to explain.

  


The rest of his day was spent getting his ass repeatedly handed to him in the ShinRa company gyms.

It started out innocuously enough, as Elsa informed him when he arrived that his partner was waiting for him in the gym, and his training was starting now. He took the elevator to the 64th floor and found Rude waiting for him outside the locker room, still in his suit and sunglasses and looking like part of the architecture.

"Hi," Reno said, holding out his hand. "I guess we haven't really met yet, partner."

Rude seemed to consider Reno's hand a long moment before taking it for a brief shake. "Thought you might turn up here eventually."

"Yeah," Reno grinned, rocking back on his heels. "I guess I should say thank you."

Rude smiled in a way that only made it halfway up one side of his mouth, and Reno wondered if it was intended to be as intimidating as it looked. "You might want to wait on the thanks," he said, and tilted his head towards the lockers. "You're number 19," he said. "Your ID will get you in the lock. Get changed and meet me on the mats in ten."

Reno tossed off a salute, and ambled into the locker room. In his locker he found clean towels, a pair of sweatpants, and a navy blue t-shirt with the ShinRa logo screenprinted on the front and "SECURITY" across the shoulder blades.

By the time he had changed and gone back out into the gym, Rude was waiting for him. Apparently, Rude's suit jacket didn't do anything to enhance his size. The man was built like a brick wall, and just because he was only wearing loose training pants he somehow managed to look even more threatening than he did in his work clothes and shades.

An ice-blue leviathan curved sinuously over Rude's right shoulder in crisp tattooed ink, digging two dimensional claws into his opposite hip. In the wall of mirrors behind them, Reno could see the lithe dragons' coils slithering down Rude's back. He wondered how far down-- and where-- the rest of the tattoo went. Both his nipples were pierced, and without his sunglasses there was something indefinably appealing about his eyebrows.

Reno spent about three seconds artfully rewording his previously inflexible stance on tough guys not being his type.

"You did pretty good in that bar fight," Rude said, stretching his neck slightly. "You have any training?"

Reno stepped up lightly onto the vinyl mat, nerves jangling in a not-unpleasant way as they usually did before a fight. "Not really," he said. "They give everybody a crash course in self-defense at the Pavilion, but anything else I just picked up by trying to stay alive."

"Let's see how you'd do against me." Rude let his arms hang loose by his sides, not even taking a defensive stance. "Come at me. Assume it's a real situation."

Reno raised both his eyebrows in disbelief. "Riiiight, are we first assuming I'm suicidal?"

Rude's mouth twitched, but he didn't say anything. Reno took a half-step backwards, sizing him up. He was tall, and tall guys sometimes left their legs vulnerable. A quick fake towards the face followed by a drop and sweep seemed like Reno's best option.

Reno took two steps forward and then pressed the advantage of his speed, launching himself up in a distracting feint and then dropping into a low kick to take Rude's ankles out from under him.

...That was the _idea_ , anyway. What happened really was that Reno got maybe as far as the two steps up before he realized that he had never really seen Rude without his sunglasses, and that his eyes were two startlingly different colors. Reno didn't have time to think about it more than that, because something slammed into him with the force of a cross-metro transit line train, the entire training room did a queasy 360-degree turn all the way around him, and he was suddenly flat on his back on the mat trying without much success to get some oxygen back in his lungs.

"Rule number one," Rude said, bending down over him. "Pay attention."

Reno sort of... wheezed. Rude had floored him with about as much effort as Reno would swat a fly, and he hadn't even seen the man _move_.

Rude reached down and grasped Reno around the forearm, hauling him back up to his feet and smiling with his mismatched blue-green eyes. "You know, technically you have to know fifty different ways to kill a man with your bare hands before you can even be considered as a Turk."

Reno massaged his ribs, which were sore from hitting the mat, but not from Rude's throw. Reno still wasn't sure where Rude had grabbed him, or if he had just stuck his arms and legs in Reno's momentum at the right place to send him flying, like a stick in the spokes of a bicycle wheel. "Holy Shiva Queen of Frost," he gasped, when he had figured out how to get air in and out of his lungs properly again. "Why the hell'd Tseng hire _me_ then?"

"Because you're creative in a combat environment. Because you've got speed and dexterity on your side." Rude shrugged. "And because I recommended you. But you've still got a long way to go." He took a step back, dropping into a ready position and waving Reno towards him with a slight gesture. "Now try it again."

By the time the morning was over, Reno was sure he had had every single part of his anatomy slammed into the mat at least five times, and he had never so much as caught Rude off guard even once. He landed one final time in an undignified heap on the mat, and his limbs flatly refused him when he tried to get up again.

"Not bad," Rude said, dropping down on his haunches next to the pile of goo that had been his partner. "Hit the showers. Shift's over."

Reno gingerly picked himself up off the mats, noticing to his chagrin that Rude hadn't even broken a sweat.

He flung his workout clothes into the laundry basket and wrenched the water on full blast, hoping to steam out the ache in his muscles and wondering how many shades of purple he was going to be the next day. It was too bad that ShinRa had already paid off his contract at the Silk Pavilion, Reno thought, because he was seriously beginning to wonder if they had picked the right man for the job. However, the price of his contract cancellation with the Pavilion was being docked in a percentage from his check, effectively keeping him indentured to the power company until he had worked it off. For better or worse, Reno was stuck with ShinRa Company just as much as they were stuck with him. He put his head under the stream of water, plastering his hair to his forehead and thinking that at least if he had been put in a room with Rude and told to get the man off, he would have had an idea where to start.

He toweled off and squidged back to change, getting the wrong locker at first and wondering why in the name of Ramuh someone would keep a megaphone in his gym locker. By the time he had found his own door and gotten back into his suit, he expected Rude to be long gone. But the other Turk was outside the gym room and waiting for him, shades back on in spite of the sunset happening somewhere beyond the skyline.

"Dinner's on the company, the first week," he said. "You interested?"

"Depends," Reno grinned. "What is it?"

Rude pushed himself up off the doorway, clearly expecting Reno to follow him. "You won't be disappointed," he said.

  


The restaurant didn't look like much from the outside: a brick storefront and an unassuming swing sign hanging over one fogged window. Rude hesitated a minute outside the door, some sort of weight settling on his inscrutable face.

"Hey," Reno said, "Everything okay?"

Rude didn't answer, staring up at the sign as it waved in the cold night wind, gold letters winking down at them in the dim green mako glow of the upper plate after dark. Finally, like a man faced with a hard task, he opened the door and waved Reno inside.

With that kind of introduction, Reno wasn't sure what to expect. Whatever he was braced for, it certainly wasn't a comfortably dim dining area with plush velvet booths and a vast black piano-- unoccupied-- sitting in pride of place.

The hostess took their overcoats but Rude made his own way to a circular booth in the back of the room, Reno trailing along behind. As they passed the piano he noticed that the lid was down over the keys, and tied with a somber band of black ribbon.

Rude, even with his sunglasses on, seemed to make a point of not looking at it.

"I didn't catch the name of the place," Reno said, sitting down and wincing a little in the process, thanks to Rude's treatment.

"La Vitesse," Rude said. "Also known as the department's alternate offices. After six weeks you get a standing tab, here."

"So it's the hangout, huh?" Reno sat back in the comfortable booth, and nodded approval. "Pretty posh. What were you doing in a dive like the Seven Slots in Wall Market?"

Rude didn't answer, looking over the rims of his glasses at the silent piano. The quiet stretched on until Reno shifted in his seat, and a waitress appeared with dinner even though they'd never been given a menu. Reno stared down at his entree and wondered what, exactly, he was expected to do in his new line of work that would merit him a whole steamed ice lobster.

"Uh," he began.

Rude didn't look up from his profoundly rare porterhouse steak. "Something wrong with it?"

"Besides the fact that it probably cost as much as a weeks rent under the plate, no." Reno shook out his napkin. "I just want to know what the catch is."

Rude arched an eyebrow, chewing thoughtfully. "No such thing as a free lunch, right?" he stabbed another bite, and there might have been a smile, just barely, on his lips. "Call it some unorthodox training."

Reno grinned. "Training me to what? Early overdose of drawn butter? It's not like--" Reno paused, and was distracted enough to miss Rude smiling into his beer. "Hey, she forgot the silverware."

"No she didn't," Rude said. " _Dinner_ this week is on the house. Nobody said anything about making it easy on you."

Reno blinked. "What?"

"You want to eat it, kid, you have to get into it. No mallet, no crackers. Bare hands." Rude savored a particularly good bite of his steak. "And try not to make a mess. This is a nice restaurant."

"Rude, these things have shells like fucking adamantine," Reno said, looking at his dinner with trepidation. "How'm I supposed to--"

"It's not as tough to crack as a human fibula," Rude said. "You have two options. Brute strength, or problem solving. You pick."

Warm delicious steam wafted up from Reno's plate, and his stomach growled. Rude poked his baked potato until it disgorged melting sour cream. Reno eyed the lobster, a nice four pound cold water specimen, mottled carapace bristling with spikes. "Anybody ever tell you guys you have a sick sense of--" He stopped suddenly, green eyes narrowing on something just over Rude's shoulder. "What the fuck is _that_?"

Rude followed Reno's gaze, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about the rear of the restaurant or the comfortably curvy polished bar. "What?" He turned back around. "There's nothing--"

Reno smirked as he could not manage a full grin, not with a mouthful of what he had to admit was an exceptionally good steak. "...Problem solving," he said.

Rude looked down at the switched plates, and there might, just maybe, have been a gleam of chagrined amusement behind his sunglasses. "Think you're pretty smart?"

"No," Reno said, carving off another bite. "Just smart enough. Besides, nobody could get into one of those things, their shells are an inch thick."

"Hm." Rude picked up the armored crustacean in front of him and, with a delicate motion of his wrist, snapped the thickly-plated body in half as though it was a twig. Or possibly, considering the look he gave Reno, as though it was his new partner's spine. Chunks of shell, heavy as 100 gil coins, clunked onto the plate.

Reno's bite of steak, in his throat, seemed to be much larger than it had been a moment ago. He swallowed hard. "So um, how long have you been a Turk?"

"Long enough to have seen a lot of uneaten lobsters," Rude said, and waved his hand for the waitress to bring him a fork.

  


Reno woke up the next morning to the absolute definition of pain. He hoped he might be shown a little mercy, but the best he got was a sympathetic look from Elsa as she pointed him in the direction of the workout room, again.

"Looking a little green this morning, partner." Rude arched an eyebrow at Reno as he stepped up onto the mats. "Lobster disagree with you?"

Reno muttered something that could not be considered remotely civil, and it bounced off of Rude as easily as Reno's attempted attacks of the day before.

"We're trying something different today," Rude said, cracking his knuckles in a bored sort of way. I'm gonna come at you, and you're gonna have to handle it."

Reno put his hands on his knees, even his ponytail going limp. "My life insurance doesn't kick in for a month, Rude."

"Sorry," Rude said, without sounding one bit like he meant it. "It's against company policy to go easy on newbies. You ready?"

"No," Reno answered, but forced himself upright, hoping at least to make a respectable smear on the floor. "But I'm never going to be, so you might as well go for it."

Rude took the first step forward, and Reno's vision snapped into tight focus. This was something he was used to, someone twice his size and probably armed barreling down on him. This was every drunk asshole hitting on him on the train, every hourly client who thought it was a real thrill to beat up on their purchase. This was how Reno survived every night in the slums.

Rude's fist came rushing towards him, and Reno simply made a point of not being there when it landed. It was nothing so sophisticated as a martial art, just an intimate knowledge of how to get his body out of the way. He used Rude's forward knee and left shoulder and borrowed his momentum, vaulting up and over him to land behind his partner on the mat. Rude hadn't even touched him, and Reno had to stifle a noise of victory.

"That's more like it."

The rest of the room crowded back into Reno's vision, and he realized Tseng was standing in the doorway, incongruous in his suit next to the bank of treadmills.

"It's a start," Rude admitted, his one pale blue eye flicking in Reno's direction. "He might stay alive a whole minute and a half on the street."

Reno shot Rude an irritated look, wondering why he had even recommended him to Tseng if he though he was so bad, but didn't want to say anything in front of their boss. He hadn't seen Tseng since the day he was hired, and some part of him was obscurely relieved that his former client had chosen to walk in when Reno was actually doing something good, instead of being slammed through the ceiling of the 63rd floor.

"He stayed alive seventeen years already, Rude, I would think that's a start." Tseng's cool gaze flicked briefly over Reno. "...Decided to change your look, Mr. Montague?"

Reno caught his own reflection out of the corner of his eye, cropped flame-red hair like a firework in the middle of the room. "Yeah well," he said, with forced lightness, "I didn't want to look like a slut in a suit."

"Hardly," Tseng said, with profound dryness. "You haven't even met the head of weapons development."

Rude made a sound that was suspiciously like a laugh.

"Don't let me interrupt," Tseng said, turning to leave. "Keep at it, Rude. Try to get him up to surviving five minutes, if you can. We're short-handed."

"That was a pretty slick move," Rude said, and Reno tore his eyes from Tseng's retreating back, his mind wandering somewhere along the lines of a hot tub and the inside of his boss' thigh.

Reno made a dismissive noise. "Ah, it's just a little trick, that's all. Nothing big."

"Good," Rude's half-smile was fast becoming ominously familiar. "I guess it won't be a problem to do it when I'm actually coming at you full speed, then?"

Reno groaned.

  


"Another day, another dose of skin grafts," Reno said, when the clock had ticked to five. "If I get any more friendly with the floor I'm gonna have to start charging it."

At least Rude had actually worked up a decent sweat this time, and Reno wasn't the only one balling his workout clothes into the shower room hamper. "Must have been a hard living," Rude said, as Reno yanked a clean towel from the rack. "What you were doing."

Reno shot his partner a quick look, but Rude seemed to be preoccupied with the ties on his pants. "Yeah," Reno murmured. "But there's... worse." Reno couldn't at that moment think exactly what was worse, since he had just discovered that Rude's tattooed leviathan tail did in fact wind down past his ass and wrapped twice around his upper thigh.

"There's always worse," Rude answered, stepping into the closest shower stall and the squelch of pipes and roaring water put an end to any further conversation.

"Right," Reno mumbled, to nobody but the hamper, "like trying to figure out how to get laid without money being paid up front."

Reno's subsequent shower was intentionally very cold.

  



	6. Expectations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team-building exercises.

_maybe i should take your face tonight_   
_let you see yourself in a different light_   
_if i were to take your place tonight_   
_wouldn't Jesus be surprised_   
  
_there's no savior hanging on this cross_   
_it isn't suffering we fear but loss_   
_this is closer than i ever came_   
_just a burning moth without a flame_   
-Over the Rhine "Moth"

A month into his training, Reno finally thought he might be getting the hang of the thing. He still wasn't allowed his weapon, though Rude had taken him down to supply and let him pick one out: a nice retractable adamantine rod complete with an electrical charge.

"Six weeks," Rude had said, as Reno flicked his wrist and the segments of metal shot outward out of his hand, the tip crackling with blue energy that Reno could feel even through the rubberized handle. "Until then, you stick with the hand-to-hand."

That part of it had been going better as well, or at least Reno had been picking himself up off the mat a little less these days. Rude still got the better of him almost every time, but it took him a little longer to do so. Maybe Reno was just learning how to get out of the way.

Mornings were spent in more technical training, and Reno was glad for the afternoon brawl of muscle and speed to work out the stuff that was being crammed in his head every day. There was only so much speed-offense vehicular training, also known as 'watch Reno wipe out an entire colony of orange traffic cones' that one guy could take. He was particularly interested in helicopter lessons, mostly for Phoenix's sake. Rude said there was no way Reno was going to get them yet, waving a hand at the maimed and crunched traffic cones and saying, "You think I'm letting you get off the _ground_?"

Only one thing had really failed to improve at all, and that was Rude himself. Reno had tried everything he knew to get under the guy's skin, to weasel so much as a conversation out of him, but it had been no use. Unless Rude was saying exactly how he had managed to knock Reno's teeth down his throat, or mentioning that really the company cars weren't made to go on two wheels, he simply didn't talk. Reno could not say he knew anymore about the man than he had known on the day of the bar fight.

Which made it really difficult, Reno thought to himself, when he was doing his level best to get into Rude's pants. Had Reno not been thoroughly convinced otherwise in the gym showers, he could believe Rude didn't actually have any heavy equipment below the belt.

But a Montague is not a thing easily subdued, and so he kept at it, every day, with probably more enthusiasm than he put into his training and the systematic destruction of any vehicle he climbed into. Maybe it was just a streak of masochism on his part that even a frosty response was better than complete silence, as much as getting picked up by Rude and hurled around the room was at least physical contact.

"Hey," he said, as he always did, once they had finished in the gym. There was just a handful more of sunlight every day, hinting that winter wasn't going to last forever, not even in Midgar. "You want to go out for a beer or something?"

Rude carefully slid his tie knot back up, and flicked the earpieces out on his sunglasses. "You're still underage, aren't you?"

Rude might as well have hit him with one of his punches to the gut. Fatality. Rude always had an excuse, but that was the best one yet. Reno forced his shoulders back up again. "You know," he said, leaning on his locker to close it, "I really don't know anything about you. If we're partners, maybe we should hang out more."

"What did you want to know?" Rude asked, in a tone that certainly did not invite questions.

Reno was undeterred, casting about for something less direct than what Rude's personal taste in lovers was. "Your tattoo," he said, at last. "It's a really sweet piece of work. Where'd you get it done?"

If Rude had not expected that question, he showed no sign. "Place down in third, back when I was still in Security. Me and Raife--" He stopped, and shut his locker door with a kind of finality.

Reno had never yet heard Rude say his dead partner's name. He was burning with curiosity to find out what had happened, but since Rude was his only real contact with any company gossip, he really didn't know anything more than the Turk's name. "He had one to match?" It was not the smartest thing to press the issue, but Reno was not about to miss an opening, no matter how small.

It might even have worked, on anybody but Rude. "See you tomorrow," he said, and rounded the corner to the elevator without looking back.

There was a soft word of profanity followed by a sharp bang, and Reno glared at the dent in his locker door as though he had no idea how it got there.

  


It took him a minute and a few deep breaths to calm down enough to take the elevator down to the Department lounge to pick up his coat and a pack of cigarettes from the vending machine. It was usually empty after five, but Reno was surprised to find it occupied. Tseng was leaning against the coffee vending machine, his eyes not quite focusing on a cup that had been dispensed and filled long since. Reno had never seen someone so obviously having a headache in his life.

"Hey, Boss," Reno said, as gently as he could manage without sounding like a total girl. Tseng started, looking at him for a moment as though trying to figure out who he was. "...Tough day?"

Tseng straightened, smoothing back hair that had escaped his usually neat ponytail. "I thought everyone had gone home for the night."

"Not yet," Reno said, and found the excuse coming up to his lips unbidden, smooth as anything. "It's my new place... I'm not used to it yet, living on my own." In the dim glow of the vending machines Reno could see the shadows around Tseng's eyes, and he could think of several nice ways of taking both their minds of their problems. "I never even had my own room before."

"Big family, I take it?" Tseng seemed to remember his coffee; he reached down and wiggled the plastic door up to get the cup out.

"Big and noisy," Reno said. "I guess they're right about it being lonely at the top."

Something moved across Tseng's face, and he smoothed his thumb over the lip of the styrofoam cup. "I suppose so."

The pitch of Reno's voice changed subtly, along with the angle of his hips. "You lonely, boss?"

Tseng smiled, and the gesture he made with the cup was almost a toast. "I'm not at the top, Mr. Montague." He took a sip of his coffee and Reno watched the motion of his throat, remembering something pleasant. "How are you settling in? You think being a Turk suits you?"

"Right down to the ground," Reno said, but there was an unspoken proviso to that statement that Tseng caught easily.

"Except...?"

Reno blew up at his bangs, grimacing. "You gave me a real stiff for a partner, you know that? And I don't mean that in a good way."

"Rude is not exactly a social butterfly at the best of times," Tseng said. "He takes time to warm up to people."

"Anyone else would have been warmed _over_ by now, Boss." Reno stuffed his hands in his pockets, and glared out the wide windows at Midgar, darkening for the night. "Hey," he said, with something approaching caution, "I know he was your friend too so you can tell me to screw off... but what the hell happened with this Raife guy? Rude won't even say his name, much less anything about what happened."

Tseng looked down at his coffee for so long that at first Reno thought he wasn't going to answer, just walk away like everybody in the whole damn company did when faced with difficult questions. But when Tseng spoke at last, it was not a dismissal. "Come up to my office," he said.

  


Tseng's office had not changed since Reno's hire, still as aloof and polished as the man himself was. It was better lit than it had been, but still shadowy, dotted with faint pools of artful lighting. Reno's eyes swept over tasteful, modern artwork and sleek furniture. Any loose items --and there were very few-- seemed impersonal, like decor pieces chosen because they matched the theme of the room, and not with any sentimental motive: A polished onyx sphere on a stand on the bookshelf, a clear glass vase with three white hothouse lilies on the glass table. Nothing in the room gave any hint of exotic origin; not even the art was from Wutai.

With one exception.

Tucked into a shelf was a small splash of color that caught Reno's eye immediately, it was so incongruous with the room and with Tseng himself, who was opening the liquor cabinet in the opposite corner.

"I wouldn't take you for a doll collector," Reno said, as the bright object resolved itself into a small wooden Wutai warrior with black silk-floss hair in a traditional topknot, papier-mâché sword in his fist. He was slightly worn; the yellow satin of his tunic was faded with age and love under the crimson embroidery.

"It would seem I am unable to entirely escape my heritage, Mr. Montague." Tseng shut the door of the cabinet, and Reno felt that the subject of the doll was closed as well. "Have a seat."

Reno settled down in the chair across from Tseng's desk, and waited a moment while his boss looked out over the lights of Sector Two below. Tseng had poured a drink for himself, but hadn't offered one to Reno. Since Reno had just asked him to talk about the death of a close friend, he couldn't begrudge Tseng the whiskey and soda.

"I assume, Reno, that you know being a Turk is by no means a simple occupation, or a safe one."

"I don't think you'd be training me to break necks if it was," Reno said.

Tseng tipped back the glass in his hand, and looked at Reno over one blue-suited shoulder. "Do you know what our prime directive is, in this department? Rude should have told you, but I don't doubt it might have slipped his mind."

"I think he's been too busy kicking the shit out of me," Reno admitted, reaching up to his shoulder for emphasis.

"As Turks, our duty is first and foremost to protect the security and continued stability of this company. If something is a threat to that, no matter how large or small, it is to be removed. If it is an asset, it is worth pursuing. It is as simple as that." Tseng turned around to face Reno, leaning lightly on the lip of his window. "You look like you have a question."

"Hm." Reno rubbed at his chin with his thumb, watching the floodlights that lit up the building sweeping like slow lightning over Tseng's face. "I notice you say, 'protect the company', not 'protect the president'."

Tseng's smile might have been a trick of the moving light, for all that it managed to stay on his face. "And to think Rude intimated that I hired you because you're good in bed."

Reno hung his arms over the back of the chair, grinning broadly. "And anywhere else, baby."

This time Tseng's smile stayed, but he failed to take the bait. "This company," he said, "is like the center pillar holding up the plate. There are other supporting pillars, but without this one, they would all fail. ShinRa is the single largest economic and military force on the entire planet, Mr. Montague. Without it, and without us, everything crumbles." Tseng gestured with his glass. "Jack ShinRa has not made our position the most tenable one. He has ostracized Wutai completely, and his heavy-handed policy towards several reactor-based communities have eroded public support and wasted billions of gil. The company loses assets he pours into pointless scientific indulgences, and the company elite have no one to keep them in check. If he continues to sit the helm much longer, ShinRa company will sink."

Reno squelched uncomfortably in his chair. "Boss," he said, glancing uneasily around the room. "Uh, don't you think it's... you know, not the best idea to talk about that here? I mean, the place might be bugged."

Tseng lifted his eyebrows. "Of course it's bugged. And you will find that anyone listening in will surely get an earful of the dripping sink in the janitor's closet, which is where the transmitters now lead to." He settled gracefully behind his desk, and steepled his fingers in front of a face that could only be called smug in its serenity. "I'm the best in my business, Mr. Montague. If the President wishes to go behind _my_ back, he has no choice but to rely on the dubious talents of utter amateurs."

"Aah," Reno said, and sat up just a little straighter. "So, what? You're wanting to take over, is that it?"

"Placing myself as the head of this company would be a needless amount of effort for a position I find unappealingly public." Tseng studied the bottom of his glass. "Especially when there is already an heir apparent."

"Rufus?" Reno snorted. "I've never even seen the kid."

Tseng said, very carefully, "I have. I've watched him a long time, though I'm certain he does not even know who I am. He's young, and he has no love for his father, I'm sure. His potential is untapped, and most likely untempered, as well."

"You want a puppet, is that it?" Reno's voice did not conceal a certain measure of distaste. "Someone to control?"

"Not a puppet, Reno." Tseng looked at him, an there was an intensity in his eyes that Reno had never seen there before. "Merely a Protégé. Someone to make into a president this company deserves: a man worthy of the loyalty we are capable of giving. I have not enjoyed watching the current regime waste opportunities in pursuit of their own petty ambitions."

Reno nodded, offering up his own assessment of the situation. "You need to get yourself a steady lover, boss."

Tseng only smiled, as a man who already has planned for any contingency.

"So!" Reno continued, getting that particular message loud and clear. "Yeah. None of this is really helping me out with Rude, and this Raife guy."

Tseng washed away his good humor with the rest of his drink. "I've known them both a long time, before I was put in head of the Turks, before I cleared out the dead wood in this department and hired them both up out of security." He put a hand over his mouth, thinking a moment.

"Sorry, if it's rough on you," Reno said.

Tseng waved the apology away. "This is a... delicate position, for lack of a better word. There are many factors to consider, and any number of personal boundaries that are not to be crossed. Raife was--" Tseng swallowed. "Raife was not a man to let politics rule his heart, and it cost him." Tseng stood up all at once, as though his body craved motion to get away from the words. "I tried to warn him, but he wouldn't hear it. He chose his own path."

"Into someone else's politics," Reno concluded, part of him wishing now he hadn't asked. He had once chalked Tseng up as cold and calculating, ruthless even. And so he was, but only when it was needed to do his job. Reno wondered, seeing him like this now, if he would ever think that again. Watching Tseng grieve was somehow intensely more intimate than sleeping with him, and Reno looked away. "I thought it might have been a hit."

"I would advise not bringing the subject up again," Tseng regained his composure, and used it to fix Reno with a glittering dark stare. "Let it go, Mr. Montague, and avoid open confrontation with your superiors. You'll live longer if you remember your place here."

"Fair enough," Reno said, and hauled himself up out of the seat, expecting dismissal. "Though it doesn't help me with Rude."

"You're not here to be helped," Tseng said. "I hired you because Rude needs you, whether he admits it or not." Tseng lifted his glass again, but it was empty. He stared at it as though he couldn't remember what he had been drinking. "Raife was his best friend, Reno, and he was killed in broad daylight not two steps away from him. Give him time, and stick by him, no matter what." Tseng placed the glass on the corner of his desk, just so on the brushed steel surface. "That's an order."

"I hear ya," Reno said, without any heat. "I woulda done that anyway." He tilted his chin up. "...What about you, Tseng? Who takes care of you?"

Tseng folded his arms, unpersuaded by Reno's obvious offer. "I take care of myself."

"Is that why you buy boys instead of crossing any company lines?" Reno knew the moment it came out of his mouth that it was going too far. The look Tseng shot him in response only confirmed that, and Reno found it hard to swallow. "Sorry," he said, more harshly than he meant to, and turned to go. "None of my goddamn business, anyway." He stopped just short of leaving, his fingertips on the doorknob. "I guess things were easier when I didn't know your name. I can't really blame you."

"Reno--"

Something in Tseng's voice made Reno turn around, but when he did, Tseng still wasn't looking at him. "...Boss?"

"It's not a luxury I can afford myself," Tseng said at last. "Having a lover who knows my name." He looked up, mouth twisted in a mocking smile. "Raife made that lesson clearer to me than ever before, and I won't soon forget it."

Reno let his fingers slide off the doorknob. "I don't owe anybody in this company shit, except for you and Rude," he said. "So why are you worried about my loyalties?"

Tseng didn't answer at first, his eyes shining with Midgar's reflected light, and a heat that Reno hadn't forgotten. "...Habit, Mr. Montague."

And though no money changed hands, and Reno no longer had a permit or business card to show, he found he still knew the meaning of that kind of look, and he knew how to answer it. Better now, in fact, because for the first time, Reno had his own reasons.

Three steps back across the room and his suit jacket was off, flung across the table with the lilies. Another two and Tseng had pulled out his ponytail, and by seven steps total Reno had both his hands full of shining dark hair and their mouths were together, tongues sliding in a hot tangle, and Tseng's lean body pressed up warm against his own.

"I've never done this before, you know," Reno admitted, even while his hands were busy pulling down the metal zipper on the front of Tseng's jacket, and slipping into the satiny warmth between the lining and Tseng's shirt.

"You can't possibly expect me to believe that, Reno," Tseng said, as if they were standing in the corridor ten feet apart, and as if he was not running his thumbs in little circles over Reno's hipbones. "I was there at the time, if you recall."

"I mean," Reno said, mostly to Tseng's neck, "You know, without getting paid for it."

"Ah." Tseng's hand slowed a little, undoing Reno's ponytail. "Well I've never felt it... prudent to engage someone without a transaction, so I suppose we're even."

Reno was laughing, hurrying over Tseng's shirt buttons as though it would cover the fact that his fingers weren't quite steady. "Guess that makes us the two most experienced virgins in Midgar."

There was no posh hotel bed this time, only the flat metal surface of Tseng's desk, cold on the bare skin of Reno's back. His shirt was undone and rucked up beneath him, pants sliding down beyond recall with only a little encouragement on Tseng's part.

"Not quite the penthouse," Tseng said, and it was almost but not entirely an apology. His mouth moved down Reno's exposed chest, drawing him up off the metal and into his warmth.

Reno groaned, eyes half-closing as Tseng's hair slithered down his ribcage like cool black silk. "You're rich enough for me, boss. It's a good thing I don't hafta pay--unf!!" Reno's voice caught on itself. Tseng had swept his hair out of the way in one practiced motion, giving Reno a gorgeous unobstructed view as he bent down and closed his parted lips over Reno's burning cock.

Reno let all his air out at once, falling back on his elbows and sending a miniature landslide of paperwork off the desk and onto the floor. For all his time in the slips at the Pavilion, he could count on one hand the number of times he had been on the receiving end of such attention, and one of them had been when he was fifteen, his first night on the job, and one of the older girls was showing him how it was done.

She could have picked up a few tips from Tseng.

His mouth was meltingly sweet as it pulled on him with gentle insistence, his hands sliding up Reno's thighs and lifting them onto his shoulders. There was a difference, Reno was learning, between Tseng himself and the alias he had worn in the penthouse. Something a little less polished, a little more dangerous, something that made the smooth, hungry pressure of his mouth falter when Reno arched his head back and said his name.

"Tseng," Reno gasped, one hand fisting in his perfect hair, "goddamn if you don't fuck me I'm gonna quit, or come, whichever happens first."

Tseng pulled back, smiling, the flushed tip of Reno's cock resting on his lower lip. "Turks don't have the option of quitting, Mr. Montague." He leaned up, still holding Reno's legs to his shoulders, and the cold metal square of his belt buckle pressed hard against Reno's bare ass. He dipped one hand into his jacket pocket, removing a silver cigarette case, his gloves, and a spare clip for his quicksilver, stacking them neatly on his desk before retrieving a hard plastic vial and snapping it between his fingers. "So I suppose that only leaves you with one option."

Reno didn't have the heart to object, his belly tightening as Tseng stroked him with slick fingers. He pressed against Reno's entrance, petting him until Reno yielded and let him in, clutching Tseng's fingertips as though there wasn't something better he wanted there. Hot waves of sensation rippled right down to Reno's toes, like a live wire vibrating with one touch of current.

"Never thought I would even see you again," Reno managed, his ribcage shuddering with breaths that would not stay slow. "Much less this."

"I admit, I wasn't looking forward to training a new boy," Tseng's belt clattered against the desk, and the distant searchlights found his smile. "But anything more than that is classified information, Mr. Montague." Tseng bore down on him, folding the two of them together like origami flowers. Reno's eyes fluttered closed and Tseng's name was a slow moan in his throat as Tseng's cock burned into him, stretching him so full that Reno wondered how he could ever have felt empty.

Reno's patience was spent, and it was just as well that Tseng's was too. The desk shivered underneath them and the edges of the steel top bit into Reno's palms as he held on to it, and let everything else go. Tseng's kiss muffled the sound Reno made as he came, hot and messy between them. Tseng buried his face in the soft crimson spikes of Reno's hair, and Reno said his name to make up for all the time he hadn't known what it was.

  


"Reno," Tseng said on the way down to the elevator, as though they had just happened to meet and had not, in fact, been screwing less than fifteen minutes ago. "Just so you know--"

"I know, I know," Reno said, his fists jammed in the pockets of his pants, looking like he was the proverbial cat and there wasn't a canary left alive in all of Midgar. "No expectations or demands or anything like that. I'm a pro, boss. Don't worry about that."

"It's Rude, actually." Tseng pressed the down button, and the elevator car hummed demurely up the glass chute. "Keep at him, and that's an order."

"Yes, _sir_ ," Reno grinned, snapping his gum and following Tseng through the elevator doors.

  


Reno's locker wouldn't close.

"Nice dent," Rude said, eyebrows up over his sunglasses, looking at the mangled door to Reno's gym locker. "You pick a fight with it?"

"Something like that," Reno said, and gave up, letting it hang open. If someone really wanted to swipe his spare socks and grubby company-issue t-shirt, they were welcome. "Ah well, looks like we both lost--"

"It was a Phoenix," Rude said suddenly, as if he was answering a question. and he was, though Reno didn't understand until Rude added, "Raife's tattoo. It was a Phoenix."

"Really?" Reno was not about to let the opening slip by. "My brother's named Phoenix."

Rude made a noise that was not quite an invitation to continue the conversation, but Reno already had his attack planned. "Let's go," he said, picking up his jacket and striding past Rude. "I'm buying you a beer."

Rude hesitated only a moment, as though he knew any rebuttal he offered would fall on deaf ears, and there was a free drink at hand.

"It better not be a cheap one," he said at last, three easy strides catching him up to Reno, blue-suited shoulder to shoulder in the fading winter sunlight.

"I only buy the good stuff for a buddy," Reno said, without bothering to glance back at Rude. "what kind of a guy do you think I am?"

"In that case I'll expect the best," Rude answered, still intractable, impenetrable behind his shades. But Reno caught their reflection in the full-length glass windows of the corridor and knew he was finally in on the secret. "And I _know_ what kind of a guy you are, partner."

Reno hid his smile in the undone collar of his shirt.

  



End file.
